Dead Space
I recently played the new science fiction horror survival game Dead Space. It was extremely stylish and had some very original ideas in it, although not in regards to the story which was pretty much a copy of System Shock 2 only less interesting. (It even had the same pair of plot twists.)
Adobe Got It Right
John Gruber at Daring Fireball just asked why on earth Adobe would put the little 'X' close buttons on the right of the tabs in the Mac version of Photoshop. Macs, of course, traditionally have the close window buttons on the left.
I expect that Adobe has no good reason for doing this - that they are simply transferring something from the PC version to the Mac with minimal changes. However, whether by design or accident, it's occurred to me that it's actually better that way. The close button has some big problems on the left.
A Single Click Operating System
As an IT lecturer, I occasionally get a class where I have to teach beginners how to use such fundamentals as Windows, Office and the internet. As such, I'm in a good position to see where points of confusion arise for people new to computers and there are two which got me thinking.
Firstly, that the web and Windows are two different environments with different rules. It's hard to explain to the students that they don't have to double click HTML links, for example.
And secondly... When exactly do you have to double click in Windows and when do you only have to single click? I'm sure you, the reader know, and I certainly do, but how can you get it into a simple one sentence rule that a beginner can take on board? Every time I come up with one, I find a loophole. "Double click is for icons" doesn't work because you then have to define what an icon is and the loopholes just pop up there instead. It gets even worse in MacOS X with the Finder sidebar, which is single-click, and column view, which is confusingly both single and double-click.
In thinking about this, I've come to wonder why we double click at all. It's baffling and seemingly inconsistent for beginners, entirely unnecessary and has no parallel in the real world. Can you think of a button you have to press twice quickly to activate some household device?
Two Genres
A lot of people say things like "there are no new ideas". It's something I don't agree with myself as clearly these people haven't seen Avatar, read The Dark Tower, used an iPod scroll wheel or, for that matter, been on the web at all. Still, assuming they're right then I guess the only thing to do is mix the ideas we have differently. Forget chocolate covered strawberries. Let's try chocolate covered fish.
In writing, you can craft some interesting and novel stories by blending two genres. One genre becomes your setting and the other your plot. Why not have a World War 2 style war movie set in the future? Or a detective mystery set in medieval times? Some of the most popular fiction around uses a two genre approach like this.
Two Endings
Two television shows I watch recently both came to their respective climactic endings. Avatar, a wonderful show which constantly surprises me with the respect it treats its viewers, came to the end of its three year run with a handful of simultaneous good-versus-evil battles. On the other side of the pond, Doctor Who polished off its fourth season in the typical teeth-grindingly farcical style of out-going head writer Russel T Davis.