I feel like the title should have been more lyrical than that, but I’m running on a ridiculous sleep deficiency so I’ll settle for offering only excuses. Nonetheless, I am – as the title may suggest to those of you with minds astute enough to crack my code – going to Portland. I’ll be in town for a week attending the OSCON 2008 conference.

If anyone (read: either of you) is in the area and interested in meeting up for a beer or your preferred social beverage, feel free to leave a comment, send me a direct message on Twitter or contact me via email at r o b (at) r o b w i l k e r s o n (dot) o r g (take that, spammer wannabes). I’ll be flying solo all week.

Since this will be my Portland deflowering, I’m also taking suggestions on what to see, where to go and any other touristy advice. Please donate. I don’t want to spend the week sitting by myself in my hotel room.

From Joel Spolsky’s post with the same name:

Don’t do this. Users see the disabled menu item that they want to click on, and are left entirely without a clue of what they are supposed to do to get the menu item to work.

I’m going to have to beg to differ with Joel on this. Or at least with his seemingly all-or-nothing stand on it. Of the myriad of problems that exist in all of the user interfaces that are so prevalent in our world, I don’t think this problem is really a problem. I’m not arguing that disabling menu items is right, necessarily, but maybe that it’s not bad. And certainly that it’s not so bad that we should “outlaw” it. A minor distinction, perhaps, but I don’t think it’s simply splitting hairs.

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This is another call for help. In all my years of computing, browsing and generally keeping up with the times (or trying to), I’ve never – seriously, never – found a way of organizing and accessing my browser bookmarks that doesn’t quickly devolve into utter madness. Madness, I tell you.

I’ve tried the entry-level folder structuring, centralized solutions like Delicious and Google Bookmarks and am beginning down the path of a synchronized solution in Mozilla Weave (true, not a purely organizational metaphor, but synchronization will facilitate maintained organization). I’m also vaguely aware of new bookmarking features in Mozilla 3, but must confess my total ignorance of the details and to how to use those features effectively.

So to those of you out there who actually like how your bookmarks are organized, what the hell are you doing right that I’m doing so freakishly wrong?

I’m a sucker for a good utility application. That’s hardly news, but for new readers it seemed like a logical introduction. I can’t get enough of those tiny little applications that do one thing (or a few small things) that really makes my life better in some way and does it really well.

Today’s gem: iStat menus

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Over the course of the last, oh, I don’t know, year or so, I’ve signed up for a few social networks that looked interesting, useful or otherwise worth checking out. In case anyone’s wondering, MySpace didn’t make that cut. With respect to those that did make the cut, I didn’t go in with high expectations of any of them. C’mon, I’m a developer. Per the stereotype, I’m not supposed to be social, right?

One that I find extraordinarily useful on a regular basis is Flickr. I use it so often that I sprung for the pro account. Lest I appear disingenuous, I should state that I signed on as a paying customer because they forced me to do so. No one showed up at my house wearing a dark fedora and a shoulder holster, but they cut my free account off once my inventory reached 200 photos. It’s a hell of a service, though, so $30 a year is money well spent, I think.

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