The tiles look nice…

But it seems that over the years that software has become dumber and more cluttered. One thing in particular that most programmers just don’t get is input focus.

…you know that moment of anger when you are working in an application and all of a sudden the window has switched and you are typing characters and making setting changes in another without knowing it…

Yeah you know who is responsible? The not much smarter than a box of rocks programmer, that’s who. There are a number of stated that an application window can be in, you the user for the most choose which state you want to be in. Like when you want to be in the top window and input focus state; meaning that that the application you are working with is on top, at the front and your keystrokes and input are going into it. Easy enough.

But then some idiot developer has decided that his application needs your attention… what does he do, the simpleminded thing… pops it to the foreground and grabs the input focus (input focus = where your keystrokes go). Simple minded and dumb.

There exist any number of ways to signal you the user that something else needs attention; flashing the window frame, beeping, even popping to the top but without grabbing the input focus. But most programmers are to rock stupid to know that or even think about what the consequences of their act is. They all live in a little bubble of ‘my application is most important’.

Even worse is this is a technique used by malware programs to gain an accidental “ok” input to start their nefarious actions…

I’ve inserted an image which is a link to Youtube since Google has broken the old way of embedding… ‘do no evil’ yeah greed gets in the way of good intentions always…

For the first few days I was doing some WWII reenacting as the commander of the German forces for the March on Rome event at Fort Stanton near Ruidoso.

Here I am trying on a panzer III for size…

After the event Lyn and I went up to Old Town Albuquerque and spent a day wandering around with no set agenda…

Here’s the church near the square…

and the church courtyard…

Next we went up to Santa Fe, we were disappointed after seeing how wonderful Albuquerque was with it’s large variety of independent vendors and broad range of goods. Santa Fe has wonderful architecture and scenery but the central plaza is high end chain stores selling Rolex’s, designer jewelry, expensive tasteless chain store art… it was like a them park mall designed by sterile Disney trained MBA’s catering to the rich. - In short a total waste of time. Only on one small sidewalk were there some native Indians selling crafts. Almost like an afterthought or a zoning correction.

A museum in the center of Santa Fe…

Some of the architecture in Santa Fe…

Next we went to Bandelier National Monument. That was an altogether much more fun outing. Bandelier has a nice forest in the Frijole canyon, early America dwellings and kivas as well as cliff dwellings carved into the volcanic tuff of the canyon walls.

Lyn in the pueblo village…

Lyn staking out her cave dwelling…

It was a long climb up three different ladders to the cliff dwellings…

Last we went to Los Alamos, the home of the Manhattan project and a longtime interest of mine. Here I am in the Fuller Lodge, soaking up history…

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Karyn surprised while eating breakfast…
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Valerie learning how to handle a side hack rig, her first motorcycle experience on a ‘40 BMW R-71…
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They radically change the look of Mur… and with BF Goodrich Radial T/A stickies she handles really well…

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Now to sell the old rims…

Most of our work was to map out battle sites for the upcoming tactical event; March on Rome. Here’s the entrance to the Fort Stanton BLM land.

The fort itself is a large collection of buildings at the center of the land. It also includes a nice and newly refurbished museum telling the history of the fort. Below is a picture of a barracks building on the fort’s main square.

The internment camp has more standing structures than the camps in Texas that I’ve visited. This large building’s walls are largely intact, though the roof has fallen years back. There is an elevated platform at one end and several enclosed rooms at the other, the main area being entirely open. This was the gymnasium build by the Germans who were held in the internment camp.

The embossing over the door reads Erbaut 1944 (established/built 1944).

Here is a wooden framed building on the site that’s fares a bit better.

A historical photo from the Fort Stanton Museum of the dining hall at the camp.

Another photo showing a two man barracks room of the internees.

A major project undertaken by the prisoners was a swimming pool modeled after the 1936 Summer Olympics pool in Berlin. A photo from the museum shows it being constructed.

another shows it in use…

The pool still stands…

The original diving platform can be seen in a photo above, here it is today…

The back wall of the pool and the remains of a sitting bench…