Eruantale

School has been keeping me busy for the past few weeks. You can all look forward to a hilarious modern rendition of Macbeth to be posted mid-march.

Right now, my most recent project is a public service announcement about antibiotic resistance. Check out the mini website I created for the project and brush up on some facts about the misuse of antibiotics.

Ah, Facebook. How we love thee—and how we love to hate thee. You came along and elbowed MySpace out of the picture for many, replacing its horribly clunky and old fashioned user interface with one that was sleek and minimal. You passed on having customizable user pages and saved many of us from gouging our eyes out at the sight of neon green profiles. To me, Facebook was a breath of fresh air. Clean. User friendly. Lacking in drama. I sold everyone on Facebook. Even my grandma uses it! Unfortunately, these days I’m wondering if my grandma would be better off using MySpace for all the confusion you’ve been causing.

“I hate the new Facebook,” is a status message that those of us with Facebook accounts have seen far too many times. It has resounded across social networking sites, the blog-o-sphere, and crossed over into workplaces, schools, and social gatherings. My mom, my mother-in-law, and my grandma have all uttered this phrase before. If you search for groups containing the keywords “new Facebook,” you come up with “About 146,000 Results,” which were all created at different times. That’s because the powers that be continue to give us a new Facebook far too often.

How many times has there been a new Facebook? At least three times since I’ve been a member on the site. I did some Googling and found a few articles with screen shots of the older iterations of Facebook.

• Facebook is Getting a Facelift: This article has a screen shot of Facebook’s appearance when I registered circa 2007/early 2008 and a screen shot of the first new Facebook I experienced in Summer 2008.
• Hands-on with the new Facebook home page: Here is the second new Facebook I saw, and the one that we’ve all been using since last March.
• New Facebook Redesign 2010: The newest Facebook design, which has been slowly rolling out to users and finally affected this disgruntled blogger today.

The new new new Facebook was presented to me today with this message:

“Welcome to your new, simplified Facebook homepage.”

The designers at Facebook don’t understand that changing the user interface of a social networking website so often does not simplify anything for their users. I understand that Facebook is constantly adding new features and therefore the user interface must adapt. However, these complete overhauls are unnecessary and disorienting. What is the point of shifting the notifications from the upper right hand corner to the lower right hand corner and then to the upper left hand corner? That doesn’t simplify my experience. They have shifted the applications button around pointlessly as well—it’s now back where it was when I first registered at the website.

Good user interface design is intuitive, which means that when your user is accustomed to looking for a particular button in a particular place, you probably shouldn’t move it across the screen. Furthermore, you shouldn’t have redundancy in a design. The new new new Facebook has a chat tab at the bottom right of your screen. When you click the tab, it displays a list of your friends who are currently online. But the same list is also shown on your homepage, in the left hand column. If you click on a friend’s name in either location, you can chat with them. What’s the point of this? Absurdly, the lists don’t even match up!

Unfortunately, no amount of complaining on the part of Facebook’s users is likely to prevent the designers from subjecting us all to another reboot of the user interface. They know that no matter what, most of us will continue to use the website, myself included. But, at least we can all start planning ahead so that we have a witty status update when the new new new new Facebook debuts in 2011.

I am now thirty days into Project 365. For those who don’t know, I’m taking a photograph of something every single day for 365 days and posting them on Flickr and on Eruantale. Here are some reflections so far:

• Honestly, I expected myself to forget and miss a day. But whenever I lay down in bed without having taken a picture, an alarm goes off in my head and I stumble over to my camera and snap something. It’s becoming more of a habit now.
• Snapping a photo is so easy to do. However, it does take a little thought to make your photos interesting. If I spend a day at home studying, I have a hard time coming up with a subject for my photo. Also, it’s important to take several different shots to get interesting composition.
• Looking back on the month of January is really fun. I think this project is going to be so rewarding at the end of the year. These are the days of my life, and I will remember them even more vividly now.

January 31st (30):

Tonight I made applesauce muffins so I have a quick and easy breakfast during the school week. These need tweaking. More cinnamon, maybe. Also, I forgot to spray the liners with nonstick. They stuck so badly.

I’m transferring to another college in September, and I heard back from one of the schools to which I applied today! This is my first acceptance letter from a four year school ever, so it’s pretty exciting. Although I think they made a mistake. I’m not sure why they’re requesting my final high school transcript—I think they meant my final community college transcript?

January 30th (29):

I have been at this for almost an entire month now!