Chris Wetherell Since October 5, 2000
Massless

Archive

2003

41 posts

January

  1. The Small Hours - mp3s and more...

    Adam and I have become The Small Hours .

  2. On Safari.

    A popular topic. Safari . Want to know all about the new Apple web browser? Mark Pilgrim (of Dive Into Mark fame) has a comprehesive review of Safari that includes links…

  3. The interface to BugLess. An experiment.

    I've been playing around with interfaces for web applications and thought I'd publish one of my experiments for a bug tracking tool I created for personal use. BugLess BugLess…

  4. Moby + hotel room = Classic musician's complaint

    One often unrecogzined difficulty* of being a pop musician: The Wait . The Wait happens when you get to a venue/city/festival. You check-in/soundcheck or whatever else is required…

  5. (I don't mind working so hard.)

    1000000000x1000000000 / 75yrs. (I don't mind working so hard.) Mr. Escalante raises his hand sheepishly: "I could do more." Are you unemployed? A web developer? I know of 2…

  6. Honor Among Thieves: Free Work and the Barter System for Indie Music

    Massless: Honor Among Thieves: Free Work and the Barter System for Indie Music "If you copy these flyers for me, I'll let your band have a Friday night."

  7. The interviewee did not cry.

    The Interviewee Did Not Cry The interviewee did not cry. Why, oh, why? Am I a soft touch? Did I not talk too much? Did I not run through lunch? The interviewer needs your collapse…

February

  1. Our web application broke the Back, Forward, and Refresh buttons in browsers. It shouldn't have.

    I had to write the following today: Changing our current navigation method would bring the user experience in line with everyday web interaction where moving "back" and "forward"…

  2. The true story of Giggle and Boggle.

    (Truth or Fiction?) In quieter times, I think often of two gentleman I've met - and of their extraordinary lives and the remarkable occasion of their meeting. Of them, Giggle is…

  3. How to Make A Man Bloody

    (Satire) 1. Manufacture Consent Often, a man will choose to fight with a weapon instead of resorting to the slap and tickle of hand-to-hand combat. But he is likely harboring the…

  4. Through the Heather

    (Fiction) Amaro ran for exactly 15 seconds at a time. He would start running at dusk. A few feet. Then stop. Then a few more feet. Then stop. Every day for a year. You could see…

March

  1. Re-design in the Time of "Car"-lera.

    My boss has a very nice German-made car. When we piled in to go to lunch, I noticed that the seat belt clasps were located near the door - meaning you'd pull the belt from the…

  2. The machines aren't touching.

    Normally, when techs talk about their personal computers or gadgets (and how they use them) people's eyes glaze like a doughnut. This is one of those times: prepare to glaze…

  3. War and the Studebaker

    (Fiction) The Studebaker died...again. Eddie sucked hard on his cigarette. "Aw, c'mon!" The family's lone car had broken down before, twice each in months starting with "M" and had…

  4. A Little City Hall

    What I now know: The Oakland City Planning Commission eats at Le Cheval* before a meeting. I know because that's what is says on their agenda for March 19th, 2003. Surprisingly, I…

April

  1. A Sharp Knife

    (Fictional blog post) My last shoelace broke -- just above the knot. It never fails. And it may mean another embarrassing call to A . Our last telephone exchange: I was caught…

  2. A New Theme, Another Show

    I've made a "The Small Hours" theme for Massless. Click here to see it . ( Requires Javascript ) It's based on our sticker design. Did you know that clicking on the thin pics in…

  3. A small surprise.

    The dying, generally, are humorless. I have yet to see someone die with a final bon mot . Or a one-liner. I've asked for limericks, knock-knock jokes, and puns and given the…

  4. Tips for Taking Minutes

    "You will die alone ," she breathed in a hoarse whisper. Hank sighed. Gypsy curses were always a terrible way to start a status meeting.

  5. The Tipping Point

    In every band I've been in there's been a point where in addition to being a particpant, I've become a fan. After listening to the recording of our rehearsal for tonight's show at…

  6. Your Audience Is Showing

    I don't want you to think this post is about you . It's about you . But not you . You . And you . But not you . Our you who art in you hallowed you that you ... Or you . It's just…

May

  1. Downtime

    "The internet just exposes us to a kaleidoscope of what we assume has the potential for understanding and intimacy when it is only a fleeting aberration of any and all truths."…

August

  1. Bitwise Operator

    Perhaps there's another way to demonstrate a willingness to engage in this sphere and avoid the artistic / personal challenges that a weblog presents... In any case, today my…

  2. Sitting at a richer TABLE

    See this example in action if you want to skip ahead to the pudding and avoid eating your vegetables...otherwise... Lowering usability concerns to a framework level. The goal I'd…

  3. Keep 'em separated: Layout and markup.

    So, my idea was to follow the nice development models that often exist at a platform level in UI architecture and apply them to the view components of a design pattern -…

  4. The dark neighborhoods

    In memory of Tomoko Pinckard. In the dark neighborhoods off the sidewalks we can't perceive inside the houses we can't see ...there are many rooms. I hope that one exists for you…

September

  1. Extending Your Forms

    For the googolth time, I've been asked to retrieve form values and generate client-side validation after a user has changed some page information on-the-fly. I like this type of…

  2. Without a pear, I improvise.

    Many application developers shy away from database abstraction tools, in part because of the overhead and new APIs they have to learn, but also because it's difficult for those…

October

  1. Up the tree, dynamically.

    Little XML files are breeding and multiplying around my web server like digital jack rabbits. I like having them around. They're XML. They're handy. They're glue. And XML is…

  2. Popsicle Data

    Re-examined: How to Freeze Columns Using Javascript and HTML . Seul, le Colosse de sable figé, rêve sa vision. The Sphinx in code! I want data like frozen sand. (I seem to enjoy…

  3. St. Crispin's, with Hulk Hands

    A photographic study. Artist: Our friend, the senior software engineer, Patrick Moynihan Subject: Massless (Chris Wetherell) Medium: Phosphors in an electronic visual monitor from…

November

  1. Homecoming

    (Fiction) Vasily returned home after his seventh year of working for the Ural-Kuznetsk complex. When he entered his house, heavily bearded and covered in grease and dirt, his wife…

  2. Forms and Folded Hands

    I like rich prototyping for web application interfaces. The richer the interface controls in an initial design, the easier it is to identify missing or desired interface features…

  3. Bytes From a Banner

    Radically scaling bandwidth and interface refactoring make strange bedfellows. For example, one interesting design problem that's presented when dealing with critically accessed…

  4. The Truth of Neon Lights

    She's turning 30. And I mean, turning . Walking, one street fades like a dawn fog and without a signpost or a lamplight she strides into Next , and 24 hours - towards a café she…

December

  1. A Wastrel's Calendar.

    As a UI developer, I've written approximately 18,478 calendars.* And, as noted in the title, I'm pretty wastrel -like. So, to further enable my "wastrelity"** I've been applying…

  2. Google! My Shyamalan moment delayed.

    I am a Google employee . I have this great idea for a movie remake I'd like to direct. A 70s French horror film. Whose title I will not mention in case you buy a camera before I…

  3. Henry and Louis

    ( The scene : The afterlife, in some form. Henry Ford , founder and chief engineer of the Ford Motor Company encounters Louis Chevrolet , racer, French expatriate, and one-time…

  4. Designs

    Starting from what we've learned to date about human cognition, I just want to construct the world's easiest-to-use web browser interface ever designed for online personal…

  5. The HCI Smorgasbord

    There are so many interesting UI links, resources, articles, and papers out there. I'll have to create another low sidebar for easy reference to them. HCI Publications (from HCI…

  6. On The End of the Beginning

    The End of the Beginning? "Computers are no longer exotic, science-fictional wonders, they're a part of our everyday lives. And, as the off-shoring trend of recent years has made…