Chin, J.P., Diehl, V.A., & Norman, K.L. (1988). [Development of an instrument measuring user satisfaction of the human-computer interface](http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=57203&dl=). CHI '88 Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems. 213-218.

interesting (and short) article on analyzing user satisfaction in some software. the only quote relevant to my project is on efficiency vs. satisfaction as descriptors of effective interface design:

>For many tasks, speed and accuracy are two related performance measures which affect a person's attitude toward the system. The time it takes to learn a system and the retention of acquired knowledge over time also affect the utility of a system. User acceptance of a system (i.e., subjective satisfaction) is also a critical measure of a system's success. Although a system may be evaluated favorably on every performance measure, the system may not be used very much because of the user's dissatisfaction with the system and its interface.

UCalgaryBlogs gets hammered rather hard by cretins looking to insert their rancid spam into any corner of the internet that helps people publish content. One just got through, and I did some quick digging to see how they did it. Persistent buggers.

I get an email notification any time an account or blog site is created. The username looked suspicious. I popped it into an IP locator, and found they claim to be from Alabama. Dothan, Alabama, to be precise. About 100 miles northeast of Pensacola, Florida. Not many UofC students are likely to be signing up for a new account from Alabama...

Whenever I’m in Vancouver (which, frankly, is nowhere near often enough), I’m struck by how many people ride their bikes to get around the city. Honestly, I think I’m amazed enough that I bore anyone within earshot with constant comments about bikes, people riding bikes, and infrastructure to enable bicycle riding.

In Calgary, it feels like riding a bike is definitely a fringe or freak activity. In Vancouver, it feels like just another way to get around. I hope someday Calgary can get to this level of bike activity.

I [saw this linked](http://fourteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-096-the-digital-given-10-web-2-0-theses/) from [Brian's](http://blogs.ubc.ca/brian/) [delicious feed](http://www.delicious.com/blamb). [A set of theses](http://fourteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-096-the-digital-given-10-web-2-0-theses/) that help to frame hype around Web 2.0.

It starts off with:

> The internet turns out to be neither the problem nor the solution for the global recession. As an indifferent bystander it doesn't lend itself easily as a revolutionary tool. The virtual has become the everyday. The New Deal is presented as green, not digital. The digital is a given. This low-key position presents an opportunity to rethink the Web 2.0 hype. How might we understand our political, emotional and social involvement in internet culture over the next few years?

Riding from Edinburgh to Dunvegan. I could watch Danny ride all day.

(via Jason Kottke, via Matt Haughey )

I picked up some gear to prep my bike for winter this year. So far, I'm extremely happy with all of it.

Studded tires

I rode with them last winter, too, but was really struck by how well they worked during yesterday's snow/ice hootenanny. Roads and pathways were often sheer ice, especially on the steeper portions of hills. My studded tires gave me perfect traction, riding up hills that had cars spinning their tires.

Several times this week, I've received emails from users of UCalgaryBlogs. Awesome. People are really getting into it. These emails were asking for plugins and themes to be installed. Perfect! I put my email address in the header of the Dashboard for just that purpose - it's super-simple for all users to get in touch with me for any purpose.

I realized with each of these emails, that it takes longer to respond "I'll get to your request as soon as possible" than it does to just go into the admin dashboard and install what they're asking. Seriously. It's actually **easier** and **faster** to go ahead and implement new functionality, than it is to write an email to tell them that I'll get to it ASAP.

Phishing is nothing new. But they keep trying new tricks. Here's the latest modification (on top of the clever ASCII-Art form and spoofed email address):

The phishing email is apparently ©2010, The University of Calgary. Well, **I'd** sure believe that. We've been told to **trust** everyone who claims copyright, right?

I assume/hope there is a standing order to fire anyone on the spot for providing their account info to these moronic phishers.

When Naheed Nenshi was campaigning for mayor of Calgary, he used Twitter and other social media extremely well. He was obviously tweeting/etc himself, rather than letting his PR committee handle it for him (as all other candidates appeared to do). Now that he's been elected mayor, he's still showing how to use social media effectively.

He's the mayor of a major Canadian city, and he still makes time to engage with citizens on Twitter and other social media. Not as a way to manage spin, but as a direct democratic channel.

I wonder if I can retrofit my current bike with handlebar flamethrowers…

I manage or monitor a few servers, and it's a good idea to keep an eye on how they're holding up. The Linux `uptime` command is all I need - show me how long the server's been up (or if it's cycled recently - power hiccup?), and CPU load averages.

I just whipped up a dead-simple solution to let me embed the uptime reports from the servers into my retro homepage.

I'm working on a project that involves building a website to organize and present a bunch of content. We could do it in raw HTML, but it makes more sense to use a content management system. We could do it in Drupal, but my ability to make Drupal look good is somewhat lacking. So, I'm using a site on UCalgaryBlogs to take advantage of Wordpress' content management features. Here's the basic how-to: