Double Blind

I am happy to report I have been re-elected to another term to the park board:

PARK COMMISSIONER
* Five (5) to be elected 11 of 11 Polls Reporting
1 * SKONBERG, Owen 3,156
2 * McCREA, Bob 2,764
3 * TOEWS, Carlton 2,735
4 * PETER, Sacha 2,261
5 * SHANKS, Malcolm 2,065
6 ALLINOTT, Scott 1,950
7 ROSS, Austin 1,861

Thanks again to the voters of Chilliwack. It is one thing doing the analysis of elections that others are involved in – it is another being involved in your own election.

Google made a very bad user interface decision with respect to the redesign of their Google Reader. This post is a fairly good summary and I echo the sentiments. I did not use any of the “social” features of Google Reader, but when they switched their interface I do find the diminished screen real estate and horrible colour scheme to be detrimental to the whole experience.

What I find interesting is that this is the first time Google actively did something to a product of theirs that I used that would encourage me to no longer use it. Similar products include Office 2007 vs. 2003 (2007 and later has the new “Ribbon” style user interface which is completely unusable), Windows Vista (although I will note that Windows 7 is tolerable) and quite frankly, the whole internet in general.

I’m finding it very interesting how digital technology is seemingly “eroding” into something less usable and less intuitive. Even when working with my cell phone I have to combat a bunch of stupid features that I do not want that gets in the way of what I want it to do.

Maybe this is a sign of my old age.