Welcome!

This was a great Dream Theater concert I went to on Sunday evening at the Rockhal in Luxembourg. The fantastic opening act was Devin Townsend. It's been a long time since I went to a rock concert... too long.

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Rockhal

Rockhal is located next to Luxembourg university on an old steel works that is now creates a bizarre backdrop to the area.

Devin Towsend

Dream Theatre

A simple slow ride to Mersch and back in the lovely weather, before the Dream Theatre concert. Around 18km in an hour and a bit.

A nice 7.2km walk around Echternach lake. It started off with a steep climb into the forest to one side of the lake. The path returns to the level of the lake after about 4km in the forest. It then winds around the lake, past the Youth Hostel and back to the starting point. It was a lovely walk on a wonderfully warm and sunny day and the dog had a great time.

I cycled to Colmar-Berg and back, which is just under 40km. Took me three hours, including some breaks. Narrowly avoided a rain shower by cycling into the shower before it really started. It also meant going against the wind, which was tiring. On the way back everything was wet and there was unfortunately no wind in my back!

I was hoping to do another circular walk, this time the one around Mersch. Unfortunately we took a wrong turn near the beginning and ended up on a new part of the PC 14 cycle path heading to Schoenfels castle instead. Still it was a nice comfortable 7km walk taking about 2 hours at leisurely stroll with a dog more interested in smelling the flowers (and less pleasant things) than walking!

Here's a photo of the castle. Not exciting, but they apparently use it as a homeless shelter - or at least it houses the local homeless charity stemm.lu.

I cycled into town today for the first time in well over a year, probably 18 months. And, who'd have thought it, they built a new cycle path right past Dommeldange Gare which saves you cycling through a particularly annoying part of town on your bike. Fantastic!

Designing Web Usability

by Jakob Nielsen

This book was written by Jakob Nielsen almost a quarter of a century ago. It's been sitting untouched on my bookshelf for at least half of that time. Whilst in isolation due to covid, I decided to browse through it to see how relevant it still is.

Preface

In the preface, to answer the question why he published this information as a printed book and not online, he gave three reasons:

• Computers screens are not yet good enough to read so much content,
• Web browsing is not yet straightforward enough compared to turning pages on a book,
• Readers (and authors) are not yet comfortable reading through non-linear information.

He predicted 2007 to be the year books would be finally replaced by online information.

Looking back from 2022, none of his conditions are satisfied to the extent that books are no longer needed. there are still plenty of bookshops, selling plenty of books.

Whilst there has been improvement in all three, addressing them point by point:

• only e-readers (such as the Kindle) are good and affordable enough for reading books on,
• web browsing has improved immensely, but at times I wonder if it is going backwards. Certainly the browser back button is often broken due to poor site design,
• readers are certainly more used to browsing the web in a non-linear fashion to find information quickly. I am not sure how keen they are on reading 300 page novels online though.

Below are my thoughts on each of the chapters in the book.

1. Why Web Usability

The basic point made here is that bad usability equals no customers. That you are not just competing with other similar services, but with all services on the web. If a user can't easily figure out how to use your services online, they might end up spending their time and money on another, unrelated service instead.

This point is certainly still very true. With one caveat, it doesn't apply to all the government services that are now online. If you need to file a tax return form online, you can only do this on the dedicated government site. It is probably why so many public sector websites had such poor usability, never mind accessibility in the past. But thanks to legislation the picture has now improved to the point where public sector websites have least detectable accessibility errors according to the latest WebAIM figures.

2. Page Design

This section begins by stating that site design is more important than page design from a usability perspective, because it is unlikely the first page a user lands on will be the correct one. This is still the case, even if Google (which had only just been founded when this book was published) does a good job at pointing you to the correct information.

Screen real estate

It then continues onto screen real estate in which most of the points made are still relevant. Don't waste space (which doesn't mean all white space is bad), use most of the available space for the content, minimise space dedicated to navigation and adverts (which if needed, should eat into the space dedicated to navigation). Whilst these principles still stand, unfortunately adverts rule the web and so few commercial pages follow them anymore.

Next up it discusses how to deal with screen resolutions, and the fact that you cannot predict your users' browser environment. The book makes the point that you should not assume too much about that environment and make sure your design can adapt to the most common environments, including being careful how you use non-standard components (thankfully this is less of an issue now). These points are still valid, in fact they are a pre-cursor to responsive design and graceful degradation I suppose.

It continues on to make the case for semantic markup which is now well understood even if not yet always implemented.

Download speeds

It also goes into quite some detail about download times and keeping these to a minimum (below one second). Whilst download times are no longer so relevant thanks to bandwidth improvements, the pure download speed problem has been replaced by the latency in the browser having to download many, often hundreds, of additional files and then process them before they can display a page. It means that despite all the advancements in browser tech, bandwidth, cloud caching and edge computing, very few websites meet the one second display time recommended here. That is a truly saddening turn of events. We've taken all the improvements in tech and made things worse.

Links

The book makes a lot of still valid points about links. The link titles should be meaningful and two links pointing to the same place should use the same URL, so the browser can indicate a link has already been visited.

On this last point, I would say this is no longer relevant. Nor is the point about making links blue or underlining them. Users are now used to the fact that anything can be a link and don't care too much whether they have visited a link or not. Not that this is a usability improvement, but it is the current state of web design. In fact these are now considered more to be accessibility issues than usability issues.

Quite a bit of discussion on the need for outgoing links and not to be afraid of them. I think this is now well understood by most site owners. A good point is made about incoming links. The only way to make these work, is to use permalinks. After 20 years the web is now awash with broken links, so it's kind of accepted that not all links work. But if an incoming link does not work, make sure to offer suitable alternatives on your error page to the user.

The book does make the point that site registration breaks incoming links and leads to loss of users. Interestingly it also states that micropayments might take care of this. Unfortunately this never happened. Facebook, user tracking and selling our data happened instead.

CSS, Frames and printing

The points on CSS and frames are probably no longer relevant. The web is mature enough to make good use of the former and scarce use of the latter, although iframes are making something of a comeback now.

It also covers how to make a webpage printable, although not using CSS, which probably wasn't standardised yet at the time. Instead it recommends linking to PDF (or PostScript) versions of the page. It does make the very important (and still 100% accurate) point that PDFs are for printing and not for reading on-screen. Don't make important information only available in PDF format.

3. Content design

Overall this section is still very applicable. Users don't like reading online. Keep it simple, keep it to the point, enable users to scan pages. Use clear headings, bullet points and plain language. And employ a "web editor" - writing for the web is a difficult skill that needs to be learned.

It covers the need for clear fonts and colour contrast and to avoid ALL CAPS content.

The section then spends a lot of time on multimedia content. A lot of the considerations are only partially relevant now, since bandwidth and smartphones have made multimedia an ubiquitous part of the web in 2022.

One point I disagree strongly with is that good sound can increase the user experience. Whilst true, it stems from the time when perhaps people browsed the web at home or in their own office. The point is also made that sound should be unobtrusive and quiet. Still it is infuriating when a website plays sound without me asking it to. If I start a video, or music file, I am happy to hear sound. Otherwise, keep quiet.

Finally, I am happy to see this point made about content:

Any time you use any format other than plain text and standard HTML, you risk depriving users with disabilities from being able to use your site.

4. Site design

This section hasn't really dated and thankfully the advice is largely followed nowadays. Key points are around the importance of an informative homepage, the scorn for splash pages and the pointlessness of under construction warnings. Websites are always under construction.

It goes on to warn about metaphors from the real world, such as the shopping cart, because the user might not always understand them. It does make the point that the online shopping cart had already back then become an interface standard and was no longer a metaphor.

Navigation and structure

The point is made that good site navigation is achieved when a user can answer the three questions:

• Where am I?
• Where have I been?
• Where can I go?

I am not sure the second is still so relevant anymore, at least most designs now don't try to indicate this anymore, unless through the means of breadcrumbs. Also your browser history could tell you where you have been.

Structuring the site according to user needs, not the company's internal organisation is a well made point. It is now better understood, but still not universally applied. The fact that the user is in control of where they want to go and not the site designer is also made and still very true. The need to reduce navigational clutter is also raised and has to some extent been addressed through expandable menus (eg hover menus, which have become "click to open" menus due to the lack of hover on smartphones).

Search

Since the book was written before Google completely redefined how finding information on the web works, the section on search is now not so relevant, except perhaps to intranets. I have yet to find an intranet with a decent search mechanism, often because the basic search algorithm considers all content equal. But keywords found in a page title are surely more important than when found in the main page content.

Finally URLs themselves are discussed. But other than trying to keep them alive as long as possible, I am not sure URLs are very relevant anymore. Whilst users do sometimes try to guess a URL (I know I do), since most of the web is now browsed on a smartphone it is probably less the case. In addition the prevalence of walled gardens and closed apps has made URLs less of a thing - with the exception that they need to work of course.

5. Intranet Design

This is more about the business need for a good intranet than the actual design. User testing is key, along with an appropriate level of investment. The economic loss of poorly designed tasks in an intranet can costs millions when replicated daily by 1000s of employees. Still very relevant.

6. Accessibility for users with disabilities.

Quite a short section, maybe reflecting that this was still a niche consideration at the time. It does make the point that various legislation actually requires certain websites to be accessible. The techniques mentioned are all still very applicable today.

Unfortunately the point was not heeded and accessibility (or lack of it) is still a major issue in 2022. This is despite the following prescient comment:

Those of us who plan to be around for a few more years also have personal reasons to promote accessibility because as we get older, we will experience more disabilities ourselves.

It looks like we only have ourselves to blame if we are unable to claim our online pensions due to accessibility reasons.

7. International Use

This chapter is interesting because it recognises that the web is global and you might need to consider the cultures and languages you design your site for. The points are still very relevant especially this one:

Make translations bookmarkable: different URLs should be used for different translations of the same content so it can be bookmarked in the correct language.

Overall I am not sure the problem of country / language / culture has yet been solved adequately on the web. Certainly not in any uniform manner that could be considered an "interface standard" such as the shopping cart. I am still too often displayed content in the wrong language because of poor assumptions and design choices.

8. Future Predictions

On the one hand this chapter is now largely irrelevant, on the other it is interesting to see if the predictions were correct. Many of the more specific predictions have not happened as predicted. Nevertheless, the underlying point that as the web becomes more common it will at some point be ubiquitous and change everything, has indeed happened.

The chapter does predict mobile devices, although fails to foresee many of the effects of this, especially with respect to the pros and cons of social media and the power of big companies that run them. It does predict that privacy becomes precious, however assumes that users will be willing to pay for this privacy. Unfortunately it seems we are at the moment only too happy to give away our privacy for free. But privacy awareness is raising and maybe this will change in another 25 years time.

The death of both browsers and newspapers is predicted. The former are still very much around, but having to contend with mobile apps and the power of the companies that profit from the app stores. The latter are clearly now struggling as a print media. Integrated media services are predicted to happen once bandwidth can support them. Welcome to the present day!

9. Conclusion: Simplicity in Web Design

The points raised here are still relevant today, but I feel the web is no longer something to be discovered and we spend less of our time trying to find new services and more of it simply using the ones we already know how to use. So the need to keep people on your site it's perhaps somewhat diminished.

The virtual real-estate land has been divided up amongst the big players. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Apple are the obvious ones. However, within most sectors there are now established winners (Netflix, Strava, Spotify) and whilst competition is still rife, it is impossible to break into this without billions in financial backing. And even when you do, the most likely outcome is that your patch of virtual space will be bought. ie You will either be acquired or forced out.

Conclusion

The book has dated very well. Most of the points are still valid. Sadly few of them are universally applied. Still some way to go then.

by Iain M. Banks

Interesting book of short stories, including one by the same name about the Culture observing Earth in the 70s. They decide to leave it in peace, as a "control" to better understand what happens to planets apparently intent on destroying themselves!

Overall I enjoyed the stories. They are far easier to follow than his larger novels. Except for the last one, which was incomprehensible and appropriately named "Scratch".

So, in Bulgaria when you get a speeding fine, they don't tell you about it. They don't send you a letter. Instead at some, point later on, eg when renewing your passport, you get an official notification that you have a fine to pay, in our case from December 2020. When you then eventually go and pay it you're told the fine will be reduced by 30% if you pay. So our fine was either 70lv if we paid or 100lv if we didn't. Nobody could tell me what happens if you don't pay! All of this for going 72 in a 50 zone. And we weren't even in the country, at the time, but the car's in our name...

For the last few months I've been playing Wordle quite regularly every morning. I've been recording this on my Wordle results page.

With time the game started getting a little tedious for me. I am not very much of a linguist so I was usually finishing the puzzle on my 4th or 5th attempt. Not bad, but hardly worth writing about 🙂.

So after 88 attempts, only 6 failures and an average of 4.48, I call it quits.

Thank you Josh Wardle for creating this beautiful waste of time! 👍

A very good article on The Guardian about why there is so much vaccine hesitancy: Why don’t some people want to get the vaccine? Here’s why | Musa al-Gharbi | The Guardian.

Changing narrative

My own view is that the changing narrative on the vaccines hasn't helped. Personally I am double vaccinated and soon to be boosted with a third shot. So I do not consider myself an anti-vaxxer. However, given the points in the article and having seen the changing narrative in favour of the vaccines over time, I must admit that it's not just about crackpots. Fact is that the vaccines are not as effective, in the long-term, as hoped and that many countries are now pushing for a second booster - ie a 4th vaccine shot. I don't mind this if it is voluntary, however if it is compulsory with vaccine passports, showing proof of continuous vaccination, being required to access basic entertainment facilities such as restaurants and cinemas I think I will also get fed up.

Individual Responsibility

Whilst we are far from getting the virus under control, it does seem like we are able to cope with it far better than two years ago. Booster shots should become a part of the annual flu vaccine for those who want it. Whilst I don't for second want to belittle covid, it is clear that the real danger is for the elderly and those with other underlying conditions. I include myself in this bracket. Forcing the younger generations, in some countries those as young as 13, into continuous boosters with a product which has no long term side-effect history seems exaggerated.

Big Pharma

The other issue is Big Pharma itself. On the one hand what they have achieved is fantastic, bringing to market an apparently safe vaccine, saving possibly millions of lives. On the other hand, the history of Big Pharma is not exactly one of openness and social responsibility. Rather it is about profit above all else. Sure companies should be profitable, but not at the expense of our collective health and social systems. It is why they are generally unwilling to fund research into diseases which could be cured by a one shot vaccine. Where's the long term profit in that? Rather they like to research far more profitable long term treatments such as Cancer research. Nothing wrong with Cancer research, but it is not the only deadly condition on this planet.

Conclusion

So there you have my thoughts. Let those who want to boosted, be boosted. Leave those who don't in peace. Let all of us get on with our lives. And maybe enforce our at least encourage continued mask use and improved ventilation in crowded areas.

Barcelona

A lovely warm week spent exploring Barcelona, despite it being the middle of February. It was great to get away from the permanent cold, damp and wind that is Luxembourg during the winter months.

Saturday evening

We arrived in Barcelona by plane around 7pm in the evening and got the metro to our rented apartment in the Eixample area of Barcelona. The metro journey was straightforward but needed two changes. There apparently aren't many lines going right across the town in the East - West directions.

After we had got there we walked around to find a place to eat and noticed that every second place was a ramen house. For a while we thought we'd landed in Asia, so decided to go with the flow and have some noodles for dinner which tasted lovely.

Sunday

We spent most of the day walking around town. We started with a metro ride from Girona (our closest stop) to Barceloneta. Here we strolled past the port with it's mega yachts and headed for the beach walk to have a look at the sea.

We circled back to the Barceloneta stop away from the beach, walking through the Parc de la Ciutadella and the Parliament of Catalunya.

Then we stopped at the Brunch and Cake back in the port area for wonderful late lunch, before heading on to the Gothic Quarter and then walking up La Rambla to the Boqueria market.

From there we turned east and walked to the Catedral de Barcelona just in time to catch a small concert and dancing celebrating Festes de Santa Eulàlia on the 13th February.

Monday

Monday was a day of Gaudi pure. We started by walking up the Passeig de Gracia to take a look at the Case Batllo and then the Casa Mila.

After that we headed towards the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's most famous work and Barcelona's most outstanding landmark in the heart of the city. Construction was started in 1882 and it is still not finished.

It's quite an amazing site, which only gets even more fabulous on the inside.

After the spending well over an hour at the Sagrada Familia, we headed for Parc Guell to finish off our day of Gaudi. We walked there via the lovely Gracia quarter where we stopped at another noodle bar for lunch.

Tuesday

A slightly later start followed by the morning walking around town before having lunch in the flat. Then we headed off to the Montjuic castle near the port of Barcelona.

We walked up the small hill through the nice park around the castle.

We then got the cable car down

In the evening we had the best meal of the trip, in a restaurant just off Ramble de Catalunya after strolling around Passeig De Gracia. Interestingly the place (Cafe and Tapas) gets lots of poor reviews on social media, but we enjoyed the service and the food. Maybe management has changed, or in the off season it is better, or we just got lucky...

Wednesday

In the morning we walked into town, past the Arc Triomf (which does not actually celebrate any specific Spanish victory) and onto the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Palau de Musica (palace of music).

We went on the tour of the palace which was quite an exceptional experience, including a performance that was on-going for some local school kids. The concert hall has the most exceptional sky light. Definitely worth a visit, at least as much as all the Gaudi things around the city.

We got around the palace just in time for lunch, so had a great lunch in the palace's wonderful café.

After lunch we headed to the Picasso museum, which had some interesting exhibitions on the life of Picasso, as well many of his painting, especially his early sketches. Obviously his more famous works are elsewhere.

We finished off the day with a quick look at the Basilica of Santa Maria del Mar, before heading home for dinner.

Thursday

This was a day trip visiting the Montserrat monastery, an hour's train ride west of Barcelona. So we headed to the Placa de l'Espanya to get the tickets and the train.

We started off the visit with a look around the church, which included a lovely performance by the local boys choir.

We then headed up into the hills for a couple of hours some fresh air.

Friday

The last and final day was also the warmest. So we spent the day walking round town and enjoying the beach walk in full sun. We had lunch in a Latin restaurant called FOC. Food was good, atmosphere very lively. Seemed to be the place to be for some food and beers.

Saturday

Our flight home left around lunchtime, so after waking up and packing, we got on the metro and headed to the airport in time to catch our flight.

by Dr Gordon Neufeld and Gabor Maté

This is an interesting read about the impact of modern society on our kids and their future. The overall premise is that our kids need to "attach" to their parents and other caring adults in their environment, rather than to their peers. As the saying goes:

it takes a village to raise a child

The overall premise of the book is good in my opinion. For sure in our current society children are too "peer-orientated", as the book calls it. Interestingly the bulk of the book was written almost 20 years ago, so before the social media and internet revolution. The book adds a couple of chapters on this at the end, but doesn't add much in terms of how to deal with it, except to fight for the parent attachment of the kids.

I do have some problems with the book though. First of all the length. The first 150 odd pages are about the need for children to attach to their parents. It repeats the message over and over again, until you are quite fed up with it. But it also uses some spurious examples, with little in the way of peer reviewed references. In one case using the entirely fictional "Lord of the flies" as evidence of what happens with "peer-oriented" children. In fact the real world lord of the flies turned out quite different.

The next 100 pages then offer some solutions. These are helpful, but the issue is quite disheartening as you are essentially told to fight society. It doesn't reflect the reality of people's lives and I wonder whether the well meant advice really only works in specific, upper middle class environments. The book acknowledges the difficulties of today's parents, but offers solutions which might well not work in their environments.

In summary I liked the book and certainly agree with the issues of children's peer-orientation and lack attachment to their parents. I do feel though, that the book exaggerates both the impact and the possibilities to do anything about it, short of getting in a time machine and going back to some mythical 50s.

In addition, despite the importance of adult attachment, we should not also forget that not all adults have the best interests of the children under their care at heart. The slow trickle of stories (turning into a bit of an avalanche now) of children having been abused by adults who were supposed to care for them is testament that it is not automatically the case that children are better off around adults. Rather, children should have a healthy mix of adults looking out for them, as well kids looking out for them too.

This was a simple 6.4km circular walk around the woods of Mamer. It was a wet and windy day, so the first 20 minutes walking through the fields against the winds was not so pleasant. Once we entered the woods and were out of the wind it was more pleasant. A part of the path comes within a stone's throw of the motorway, so it was a bit noisy. It is is supposed to be wheelchair accessible, which is true for the tarmacked parts through the fields. In the woods it would have been difficult, perhaps impossible at this time of year. So be warned. Maybe when it's a bit drier it would be OK. Quite a few people walking their dogs, so ours was happy to have some time chasing after them.

by James Clear

A well written book on how to get good habits to stick and bad habits to fade away. Very entertaining with well chosen examples, including personal ones.

The book is based around the author's four laws for building good habits:

1. Make it obvious
2. Make it attractive
3. Make it easy
4. Make it satisfying

(I'm sure there's acronym to be found there somehow: OAES 😃)

If you don't want to read the whole book then simply following guidelines in the final two tables on creating good habits and breaking bad ones is probably enough. Additionally you could read the summary at the end of each chapter. Which is not to say you shouldn't read the whole book. It's definitely worth reading. Just that the book does a great job of efficiently summarising the key points to building good habits.

Useful links:

• Atomic Habits Resources - James Clear