An interesting debate between an environmentalist and a humanist

This is an interesting debate happened today. While a friend was raising fund to support patients with Multiple Sclerosis, I replied that I actually donate to Wombat Awareness Organisation. Next is the logged message, A is that friend, while B is myself.

A: I walked 9 kms on Sunday 14 Jun to help raise fund to support patients with Multiple Sclerosis.
If you like to sponsor this effort with some spare coins, please let me know. I will go to your desk.

B: Ah I donate to a wombat protection organisation. I seem more interested in protecting nature and wild animals than help human beings, haha

A: Faint ... No comment on your comparison.

B: Human being is so self-centric, this is where all the problem starts, being the supreme intelligent on earth, we should not only care ourselves, but the whole well being. While we are caring about the nature, we are caring ourselves.
You should understand it well from Buddhism philosophy.

I believe in what original Taoism (Lao Tsu and Chuang Tsu) noted, the most crucial relationship people need to deal with is the human relationship with mother nature, not the nasty relationship between human beings. The whole history went through a wrong way.

A: Animals are also self-centric. Wombat never care about human being.
The difference is they still don't have the power to make too much damage.
In a broader sense, saving nature is saving Man.
But it's long term effect; and it can't replace the immediate relief for people who are suffering from any kind of decease.
When you feel sick, you go to see doctor, not Wombat.

B: I would say all living creatures are selfish, they only take care of themselves - that's designed by nature, and it's running well in natural process to keep the balance.

However, there have been no such being as human, who put so many species into extinction - purely for their own well being or benefits. If we don't plan the long term solution, short term relief is meaningless - people soon put themselves into extinction, have you heard some NASA wants to bomb the moon to find water? - a bunch of lunatics.

Womat is sure no much help to human beings, but it's one tiny reflection of the natural protection efforts, we cannot save whales because Japanese keep on hunting no matter what, but we can help wombats if we can raise enough awareness and stop the government from legal mass slaughter - at least things need to done little by little.

Famine, wars, disease are means to balance the world population, and they are inevitable, the small adjustment efforts from within won't help much on the big picture, human world is always changed by lunatics, like Mao Ze Dong.

Optimising web page download time - tips and tools

Fast loading pages improve user experiences, it is widely accepted. But along with the proliferation of faster internet connections, web designers/developers put less attention on page file sizes. It presents a serious threat to user experiences and customer satisfaction. Fast page loading time is not only a crucial factor to keep users happy, but also a key factor to elevate your search engine rankings.

Here are a few tips to make your web sites/pages running quickly and smoothly.

1. Ensure there are no broken path and images on page - they would dramatically increase loading time.
2. Host files locally.
3. For images, always specify image dimensions - height and width, most browsers would recognise an image's dimension, leave it to be loaded last if it's heavy, and load the rest of page first.
4. Make Javascript and CSS external, because they are cached by the browser, but inline JS and CSS get downloaded every time the HTML page is requested.
5. Combine Javascript files - as a general rule, downloading a batch of JS files is slower than download one big JS file even though the combined file size of the batch equals to the big one or even smaller.
6. In the same principle, combine multiple images into a single one, the overall size is about the same but reduce the number of HTTP requests.
7. When designing Flash, rather than designing one big Flash (swf) file, make each flash scene as a separate swf file, and call respective file from the frame swf, depending on user action. In this way, those user uninterested content would not be loaded.
8. Try use vector graphic as much as possible, and reduce the usage of imported jpg, wmv and other raster graphics. Vector shapes are extremely light weight while raster graphics tend to cluster Flash movies in size.
9. Preload components. You can take advantage when browser is idle, a simple example, preload an image for a mouse over state. A more advanced usage could be, before you launch a new redesign, users browsers are stuck with caches from your old design. So before the redesign has been launched, some code can be written in your old page, when the browser is idle, the code can request images/scripts which will be used for new page. Otherwise when the new site is launched, all components would be loaded afresh.
10. Optimise images - use suitable image formats (jpg, png, gif) for different design elements, designers should be crystal clear on this.

There are some really useful tools in optimising page download time. To list a few:

• Use a page analyser, for example http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
• Using Firebug as FireFox plugin, it will analyse all aspects of a given web page. http://getfirebug.com/releases/index.html
• Pingdom - Cool little tool to check loading time of all page components.
• CSS and Javascript file size shrinker - http://www.cleancss.com/ and http://dean.edwards.name/packer/, used to clean up CSS and JS.

Millimetrik, Cities EP & August Stars, Music For Twilight EP

Both Cities EP from Millimetrik and Music for Twilight EP from August Stars are very limited edition CDR of Make Mine Music release. “Cities” released 120 copies while “Music for Twilight” was only 100 copies, while no re-issues have ever been published or even considered from MMM. Hence to say, I’m a lucky dog to become 1/100 in the world.

Music wise, “Music for Twilight” is a sombre, dark type of meandering conscious flow. 8 pieces of unsettling drone are pretty consistent in terms of pace and mood. Boomkat called August Stars’ music as “dark ambient”, and compared the album with the mighty Deathprod and Lustmord’s music. I do agree August Stars lacks a bit airiness details of those artists. It doesn’t shine in terms of complicated arrangements, and the imaginary sound scape it creates, however the album is not short of sparkling moments. And it gives you an uncertain boundary of terrain you could feel – though it’s limited. The feeling is rather like walking on a large patch of pasture while the fog confines your vision. Although this is not my most favourite ambient release, I would definitely rank it higher than most Infraction releases I possess. This is a dark music scape that wouldn’t make you feel bored, and to my surprise it is a Make Mine Music release, which normally doesn’t touch this type of dense music range.

“Cities” from Millimetrik still sounds a bit glitchy and darker than typical MMM sound. There are pleasant drum beats mingled with thawed melody and random sampling of glitches. While the structure and melody leading a well planned direction, the music doesn’t give you a cheap dance beat feeling at all. Each piece is programmed with enough airiness and random glistering lo-fi bleeps. This is superb electronic beats comparable to Seefeel and Boards Of Canada – more listenable than Murcof. I wouldn’t surprise at all if this is a Merck release. Well done, Millimetrik!

Different stages of user testing

Being a UE specialist, usability testing is as common as lunch. The ultimate goal of usability testing is to improve the design of products (electronic appliance, software, website, etc).

Any products has their own producing life cycle. The testing can be conducted at any stage of the product development.

1. Planning stage - at the sketching phase, there are lots of uncertainty regarding the design of the product. Nothing can be utilised for a profound user test. Paper prototyping, mockup and wireframe are often used as low-fidelity prototype in testing. The blueprint is normally based on the result.
2. During the production - whenever designers come up with high-fidelity mockups, at least when interactive functions have been implemented, a more well-rounded user testing can be set up. At this stage the products being tested should already be able to mimic the finished products.
3. On staging - at this stage we can do so called alpha beta test. The product should be stable enough with fully equipped functions, which is ready to be accessed by participants of usability tests.
4. On production - after release, malfunctions may happen. User testing plays a key role in improving the product. Actually, the majority of usability testings only happen at this stage, due to resource or budget concerns. If you have done testing at previous stages, you'll have an easy job here.
   

Eye candy in corporate design environment

Recently read a quite inspiring article by Stephen Anderson “In Defence of Eye Candy”. The concept are nothing new, Stephen presented it in a quite refreshing way. He talked about the concept of aesthetics and how aesthetics affects cognition and emotions.

Back in 10 years time or so, there was quite a web design mania purely for sake of eye candy. Rising from the primeval stage of web content presentation, designers demonstrated their talent and aesthetic opinion by exploring the potential of newly formulated mark-up language and Flash as emerging multimedia platform.

Along with the advance of internet technology, web has been increasingly became a very important business and social media platform. Aesthetics was still important but it was all giving way to pragmatism. No matter how visually unappealing was your site, as long as it made money as an e-business site, as long as it reached its targeted hit number as an information providing site, it was considered as a good site. The same logic has been lasting until these days. Have a look at useit.com website and think of how many usability trainings the Nielson Norman Group conducts each year around the globe, you know what I’m saying.

In most corporate environment, the real dollar return becomes the only ruler of judging whether the company’s website is good or not. Bosses are focusing only on selling figures, while the pressure is taken by solution builders, information architects, developers as well as designers. In some situations there are even no dedicated visual designers – their position is replaced by lower cost web editors, whose work is no much more complicated than data entry. The visual design skill has almost become a luxury in the web team of most e-business companies. The actual visual design work is pretty much outsourced to creative agencies. However the concern is, do those design agencies really understand your business? Can their design integrate well into your web solution and you be benefited in long term?

I’ve been in such environment for quite a few years and I’ve seen it happen again and again. Some really talented visual designers can never stay in the web team of a large corporation for long. Their creativities have been limited by rigid corporate design guidelines and critical quality assurance people. Meanwhile, the outsourced design is mainly focus on short-term return, or a reflection of the requestors’ personal preferences.

It’s very common that the term eye-candy has been always associated with negative connotation. Mentioning eye-candy, to most people it almost becomes the synonym of standard violation and bad user experiences.

Are there any people defending eye candy in large e-business environment? There are! (Web) marketing people are usually die-hard fans of eye candy designs. However they are judging a design with their untrained eyes. Quite often marketing people’s design preference is contradicting with UE principles. So problems happen when they raise design requests to external design agencies.

Same as lacking design skills, profound usability skill is also a luxury in most web teams. In most situations it relies on web developer, editor and QAs’ awareness of UE knowledge. If a company has corporate design guideline, it pretty much rules both design and UE.

There has always been a debate on design and UE which one should be ruling. Now look at the reality, lacking both design and UE power makes the debate virtually meaningless. If you don’t have sound design skill in your web team and you rely on your developers build up everything, without any study or user testing, you should already know what your site will end up with.

So between Design and UE, who rules? This shouldn’t be a question at all. Usability should never become the enemy of good design, and a good design should always keep user experiences in consideration in business environment. The organic integration of the two makes your website shines.

My wife's baking obsession

Since late last year, Sandy has been devoting enormous energy and efforts into baking and dessert making. Now she's equipped with a full cabinet of baking utensils, a couple of professional baking books and a captious tongue. My mouth is getting happier and happier, however my tummy is getting clumsier.

Now let me ceremoniously introduce some exotic desserts out of wife's magic.



Celebrity Ginger Men



Donkey Roll - a traditional Old Beijing dessert



Wife pie - yeah, this dessert is named "wife pie", specialty of Canton Province. This is what makes Sandy most proud of.


Pebbles black and white


Raspberry-topped cheese cake


Dates cake - made out of big red Chinese dates stuffed with glutinous rice flour

A dangerous hike

The sky is like baby face these days, shinning around 10 min ago and shower could come in every minute. Now I draw the lesson - never do bush walking in such weather. And of course, I did it.

Yesterday I started off late at around 10am. The sun was smiling and it looked like a promising day. I set off to take a train to Berowra station where Berowra track starts. To my surprise the gate was still shut. The track has been out of maintenance for more than 2 years then. My last hike here was about 4 months ago. Though lacking of trim the track was still not too wild because many people are attracted by its sheer beauty.



It was all good at the beginning - birds were chirpping, creeks were laughing... Swiftly taking a big dip all the way down to the water level at Waratah Bay, a gust of rain suddenly came from no where, I didn't even notice the cloud. I immediately became wet all over, fortunately it was not chill at all, and I took even bigger stide.

The rain soon died off but the condition was getting worse. At many segments the plants were so exuberant that the track had been mostly covered, I need to fumble carefully at each step. Even worse some areas became quite muddy and slippery. The track is meandering along Cowan Creek and falling into the water was quite a possibility. There were wide-leaf plants all along the track, which gathered a whole lot of water from the rain. When I walked through them, all the surface liquid running down along my shirt and pants relentlessly like mini waterfall. Each step I marched ahead, the shoe in front gushing water happily like a blocked drainage.

As an experienced bush walker (if I may say), I kept on marching ahead without much drama until I reached an open area. I felt something in my left shoe like a twig. Took off my left shoe and sock. Geez I found something stuck inside my sock happily dancing - a leech! Noticing a big drop of blood was effusing out of my instep - without any pain. My god this was an interesting experience. I haven't been bitten by a leech for more than 20 years! I didn't know how this little fella ended up into my sock but since it created no pain on me, well, gotta treat him well, maybe put him back into a small pond. He seemed quite reluctant to leave my sock. I pulled it with a big force and in afraid of sticking onto my fingers I thrust it off as if my fingers touched a piece of burnt steel.

Wrung the water out of my socks, pants and shook off water from shoes I set out again. Sunbeam cast on my body, feeling quite warm and cozy.

About to turn to Winson Bay, another gush of rain came along without any warning. I saw some boats in the bay started their engines and rushing away. Though calm enough, I tumbled myself into the ooze twice. Luckily no further drama.

In the end I decided to cut short running up the Mt. Kuring-Gai trail to catch a train rather than hike further to the Giberragong Track. And surprisingly enough, I didn't feel out of breath at all after a 2.5KM steep rise from the bottom of the valley to the Mt. Kuring-Gai Station.

Reaching home, the clock pointed at 2PM - only 4 hours after I set off.