Today, I’m going to complain about what’s wrong with it.

Now, to be fair, I’m quite pleased with the whole Notational Velocity package. Simplenote’s team are quick to respond to problems on Twitter, and quickly tackle bugs as they crop up. Notational Velocity is a well-developed app that can only get better since it’s been open-sourced.

So what’s missing from Notational Velocity if I like it so much? Actually, not much! I can only actually think of three real issues, and two simply aren’t that big a deal. Unfortunately, the third has proven to be surprisingly disruptive to my workflow.

1. Markdown Formatting
Notational Velocity supports bold, italicized and underlined rich text. Simplenote, on the other hand, does not. I’d love it if Notational Velocity had an option to save rich text formatting when exporting to plaintext–at least for bold and italicized text, that is. Markdown doesn’t care for underlines.

This would let me preserve rich text formatting round-trip from a file created in Notational Velocity, edited via Simplenote’s website or on my iPhone as plaintext, and displayed again in Notational Velocity, bold and italicized text intact. It looks like I’m not the only one who thinks this is a good idea, so I’m hopeful we’ll see this at some point in the future.

2. Multiple Windows
I get the philosophy behind Notational Velocity’s two-pane, no-buttons design. I do. I also get that, as such, it’s unlikely I’ll see this last feature without forking the codebase and adding it myself, which goes directly against my philosophy for using Notational Velocity and Simplenote: because it’s straightforward.

That said, I’ve occasionally found myself wishing that I could have two (or more) Notational Velocity windows. Why? Easy: sometimes I need to refer to a daily “to do” list while also referring to a second notecard, and sometimes I need to cut and paste between a couple different notecards, particularly when I’m breaking one up into smaller subcategories.

3. The Icon
Yes, seriously. Hear me out!

A rocket-powered filing cabinet. I can’t think of anything more appropriate to illustrate what Notational Velocity does.

Notational Velocity’s new “filing cabinet/rocket ship” icon is a huge improvement over the terrible, terrible “NV” icon it had for years. It’s clever, well-designed, and the metaphor, a rocket-powered filing cabinet, is both appropriate to what Notational Velocity does, as well as being a play on Notational Velocity’s name. It’s great. I wish I’d thought of it.

I can’t use it.

I tried. I really did! Even after four months of using the new Notational Velocity, my brain simply can’t get around the idea of a note-taking application’s icon not looking like a notepad or book. I’m not setting out to criticize Colin Cody’s ingenious rocket ship icon; indeed, I’m astonished that I can’t seem to get my head around the thing.

Human-computer interface expert Jef Raskin wrote about this issue in his 2000 book, The Humane Interface. He later summed up many of these points in an email to Tom Gilb:

Definition: A gesture is an action that you finish without conscious thought once you have started it. Example: For a beginning typist, typing the letter “t” is a gesture. For a more experienced typist, typing the word “the” is a gesture.

Rule 1. An interface should be habituating.

If the interface can be operated habitually then, after you have used it for a while, its use becomes automatic and you can release all your attention to the task you are trying to achieve.

Consequently, when an interface can’t be operated habitually, we run into problems. Since I started using Notational Velocity, I’ve experienced this exact issue on a daily basis: I’m reading a blog post. It’s interesting. Full of good ideas. I think, “Hey, this is related to that thing I’m working on right now! Why don’t I copy the URL and make a quick one-sentence note about the way the information therein can be tied into the project? Sweet!”

I select the URL, hit Command-C to copy it, Command-Tab to switch applications–and pause. Wait! Where’s my note…thing? My eyes dart around, as my brain’s needle abruptly skips across the surface of its record. ¹

Suddenly, I’m forced to switch from purposefully performing a task–one that requires me to immediately jot down my current train of thought–to consciously trying to remember and recognize which icon I’m looking for. It’s really disorienting, and I’ve found it to be the one consistent hiccup in my Notational Velocity/Simplenote workflow.

Worse, because Mac OS X’s application switcher lists active applications in the order in which they were last used, I can’t even train myself to click a specific area of the screen, as I would, say, if their icons were instead ordered alphabetically. (Yes, I’ve tried Witch to switch between windows rather than applications. I like the idea, but it’s just not what I’m looking for.)

Incidentally, this quirk of OS X’s interface goes against another of Raskin’s points:

“Rule 1b. To make an interface habituating, it must be monotonous.

Commentary. “Monotony” here is a technical term meaning that you do not have to choose among multiple gestures to achieve a particular sub-task. Crudely, there should be only one way to achieve a single-gesture subtask.”

Here, Raskin’s criticizing the practice of giving the user more than one way to do a task, (To copy the URL of the aforementioned blog post, we can choose between the keyboard command, the Edit menu, right-click menu, etc.) but application switching in OS X is even more annoying. Depending on how many apps I have open, Notational Velocity can be anywhere in a horizontal list of a dozen other programs.

So I changed the icon.

Now that’s an icon you write things in!

Instead, I’m using DeviantArt contributor ^pica-ae’s beautiful Red Moleskine icons.

She’s also created a number of similar icons in more traditional Moleskine colours, but I find I prefer the red one. It stands out against the other applications I use, and as a bonus, feels easier to associate with Notational Velocity’s functionality than the black icons. I’ve used the red icon for about a week now, and it’s worked out well. Is that strictly because it’s an inherently more appropriate icon? Not at all. Perhaps it’s simply easier to find because I’m subconsciously recognizing the effort that went into thinking about the problem and finding what I felt to be a more suitable icon.

This is by no means a perfect solution. I’m frustrated that I couldn’t ever get used to using the rocket-cabinet icon, just because it IS so apt and clever.²

Another option might have been to simply train myself not to use Command-Tab to switch to Notational Velocity. It’s in the same position on my Dock. I tend to keep the open Notational Velocity window to the left side of my desktop, where it does tend to peek out from behind other apps. Couldn’t I have just learned to click the open window rather than looking for the icon? Couldn’t I have used Exposé?

Sure, there were plenty of options available, but changing the way I switch apps might actually have been an even greater change for me to deal with. Consider this: I’ve switched applications the same way on Mac OS X since 2002. I’ve used applications with pads-of-paper for icons to jot down notes since Windows 3.1. Perhaps four months with Notational Velocity and its new icon was simply not long enough for me to learn a new mode of behavior.

My experience here has demonstrated something I think we should all take to heart when designing interfaces: a change to established practices can be really, really hard for users to accept, even if they agree the change makes complete sense.

1. Tch, your MOM has synesthesia.
2. And purpose-designed! Sorry, Colin Cody!

I understand that “some of [your] best friends are Haitian” and that you’re only talking about the “bad ones” when you say “Canada will be overrun by gangs and HIV” if we fast-track the immigration process for Haitian refugees. I get that you’re not really a racist, I do.

In fact, I totally agree with your thoughts on it being “their problem” for living on a fault line, or that “those people” should have taken matters into their own hands and risen up against the succession of vile dictators more frequently. Clearly a country with such a rich history of coups could do better. Heck, the Americans were there for 20 years to help out, and where are their thanks?

And let’s face it, a country that poor? “What would they do for us,” indeed?

…you complete asshole.

“We can go out to the airport,” the mom said as they were leaving.

“Oh, that’s a long drive!”

Yes. Yes it is. With the opening of the Canada Line now moved up to August 17th, less than two weeks away, it will actually be quite a bit faster–for me, at least. The closest station is a 2km walk, bus, or bike ride away, but I expect door-to-door travel time to be much, much shorter than calling a cab.

It remains to be seen how well the existing bus service will integrate with the new stations, and if more frequent east-west buses will be needed to funnel Vancouver residents into the Cambie Street corridor. In any event, by opening early, Translink and InTransit BC will hopefully have some extra time to work out many of the bugs before the old bus routes out of Richmond get discontinued.

I probably won’t use the Canada Line much myself, still being closer to the Main Street bus myself. Since I tend not to go to Richmond or Oakridge Centre much, I don’t see a lot of opportunity to use it, but it would definitely make getting to Yaletown or Davie Street from my neighbourhood much more convenient.

Plus, as has been pointed out to me by friends and drinking buddies alike, now that I’ll be attending Langara College, the 49th Avenue station makes it extremely convenient to blast down to Gastown for a drink immediately after class. (Guys, you get that school isn’t 9–5, right?)

Still, this really does hammer home the point that for a pedestrian and transit user, the shape of our city really is defined by which buses go where. (Hint: they go downtown.) Personally, when I’m a passenger in a friend’s car, I never think about taking 12th Avenue to cut across town because there aren’t buses that go there.

These fascinating travel-time maps of Great Britain effectively illustrate what even a densely-populated country like the United Kingdom must contend with when moving people and goods around.

Also interesting is the implication of what “central” means to different people. This week, there’s been some discussion over at the Vancouver League of Drupalers, of having some coworking meetups to chat about Drupal projects we’ve been working on, get some coding down, and so forth. But where to actually meet? The Grind at Main and King Edward? Sweet, I’m there. Waves in New West? Yeah, not as convenient. However, if I lived right beside any Expo Line SkyTrain station in Vancouver proper save for Stadium or Main Street, it would be faster to go all the way out to New Westminster, hands down.

Fortunately, having my spiffy new bike has opened up a lot of options too, particularly with the ability to switch to transit when I need it, now that all the buses have bike racks.

So far today, I’ve ridden just under 8 kilometres to three out of four scheduled errands. The last one will double that. I’ll spend most of it on the cross-town 10th Avenue bike route. In the end, I will have spent about the same amount of time on the road as I would have, had I driven, if you factor in parking. It’s pretty liberating, I have to say.

But hey, even if it isn’t something that’s totally useful for me, a link to Richmond and the airport was necessary. I wish different choices had been made in construction and planning, but it’s definitely something we’ll be getting some use out of as a city. Plus, hey, Vancouver’s the first Canadian city with a subway link to the airport. Go us.

Digg is ostensibly a link-sharing site, where the most popular sites people are reading and voting upon are promoted to the front page. The downside to this is that popularity does not equal relevance. When we summarize what’s popular, we get this:

• Five Awesomely Stupid Infomercial Products
• 150 Dogs Found Dead in Freezers in Michigan Home
• N. Korea Publicly Executes Christian for Distributing Bible
• Stretch Limo in San Francisco FAIL
• Ubuntu to make Linux application installation idiot proof

Yeah. It ends up being some mix of scary, depressing, and generally button-pressing news, as well as silly pictures and reviews of expensive hand-held electronics. Unless you’re the sort of person who obsessively reads and up/downvotes articles on Digg all day –and I’m willing to entertain the idea that a significant number of its visitors are– most of those stories are not useful to you.

There’s also many CMSes and template engines capable of implementing a Digg clone. There’s Drigg, which is based on Drupal, Blinkk, FolkD… suffice it to say, there’s a bunch of them.

Just as others have argued that Slashdot has lost relevance as it’s grown, I think Digg has come to the same point.

Smaller, more focused community sites like Buzzfeed or Kirtsy, a straightforward Digg clone run by a group of women, are simply better positioned to communicate information to their respective target audiences.

Seriously, what’s the value in waiting for a site to aggregate pictures of baby zoo animals that you have to pick through when you can go right to the source?

I know a few of my neighbours:

• There’s the autistic tween two doors down who throws extremely loud temper tantrums.
• There’s the students on the other side of my house, one of whom once dated a guy who was extremely emotional during sex, to her irritation: “I just love you so much.” “Yeah, whatever.”
• My upstairs neighbour and her teenage son, whom I do see and speak to regularly, are nice: she plays golf, he likes video games. Their (great-) uncle lives down the street in what I suspect is the first house to be built on that lot. Vancouver is an extremely new city, remember.
• I don’t know the guys next door, but they always have very entertaining conversations in Mandarin. One of them frequently sings commercial jingles and Frank Sinatra medleys. They then argue about them. Once, he was playing a flute!

But this all brings me to my point. Today I was thinking about the fact that it’s actually kind of weird that I do know any of my neighbours’ names. Most of us don’t. We live in apartment buildings, or commute from the suburbs. My street definitely has more in common with the latter, with its stupid wasted space and identical “technically it’s a detached home” houses.

It’s not much, but the view’s amazing.

But worse, we all buy into it. Between my house and my neighbours’, identical to my own and built at the same time, there lies approximately 6 feet of space, more than half the width of my weird, narrow apartment. So what do we do with it? On my half, there’s a two-foot-wide path from the front of the house to the back, a foot of cedar chips, ending at a terrible, rusty chain-link fence. On theirs, the inverse. Only they have gravel instead of cedar chips.

Bravo, architects. Instead of having access to a fairly nice shared patio, allowing us to sit out in the cool breeze between the two houses, to barbeque, fix a bike, or do some windowbox gardening, we have an ugly fence dividing the space, forcing the addition of a buffer zone in the middle, lest we brush up against it and totally get rust particles all over our spiffy new bike’s handlebar tape. (Not that this happened to me recently or anything.)

By putting up a barrier and maintaining the fiction that we can’t actually smell each other’s dinner, we’ve wasted what amounts to an entire laneway. In some cities, there would be an actual street sign along a gap that wide between two buildings.

This is ridiculous, honestly. It’s time to stop catering to the idea that enclosing a chunk of lawn with a fence is a status symbol. Nobody is helped by this fence remaining here. The owners of our two houses don’t even live here. It’s not helping resale values. Anyone wanting to buy one of the properties and return it to a single-family home would incur tens of thousands of dollars of construction costs, only to be left at a disadvantage paying the mortgage. (Seriously, is there anyone in Vancouver who can afford to own a detached home and not rent out a suite?)

Without the fence, both units would have an extra amenity, appealing to renters. As tenants, we’d have more usable space. I could turn my bike around without having to lift it above my head or pick it up on the back wheel.

And most of all, maybe I’d actually talk to the guys across the fence sometime and ask them if they want any help settling the argument over the Sleep Country Canada jingle.

This post is © Catherine Winters, licensed under CC-Attribution-ShareAlike. Also, let me know.

With that in mind, I propose the Creative Commons ActuallyTellMeAboutIt license. I know I’d like to hear when someone uses my stuff! Plus, hey, the icon’s obvious, right?

On the other hand, CreativeCommons.org defines “Attribution” as: “You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.”

So I suppose it is already implied that you would eventually hear of this. Still, it would be nice to codify it somehow without having to post any specifics of the means of attribution.