However, I can’t say I agree with his proposed solution (and it seems many of the commenters on his post have the same issue with it that I do). The camera model, for me at least, doesn’t really work because I actually find the autofocus button on modern camera’s to be mentally taxing. I seem to find myself hovering on the press of the button, hoping I don’t accidentally press too hard and spend more thought in the actual action of dealing with the machine rather than focused on the shot I’m using the machine to capture.

The other aspect I dislike about this model is that it requires a hardware change for something I think can be a software change.

There seem to be 2 issues that are mentioned in his post:

1. users accidentally pressing home to jump to the application home
2. an easier way navigate backwards and forward in our navigation timeline

Rather than overloading the Home button (which is already used for multiple purposes, such as going to the home screen of the phone, jumping to spotlight, force quitting apps, navigating between apps), we already have a place in the UI for handling this, which is the back button.

So my idea is to add 2 interactions to the current back button:
1. A double tap

Double tapping the back button will quickly jump a user back to the home screen of the app.

2. A long press

Pressing and holding down on the back button will open up a list view which will show your current location in the overall app navigation hierarchy. This could either be just strictly in the scope of your navigation history (so only backwards and forwards), or in the absolute scope of the app hierarchy which would make it a sort of Table of Contents view.

Now, the downside to this mechanism is that it doesn’t solve the habit of pressing the Home button in order to “escape” any sort of deep navigation hierarchy.My thought on that is that providing the user with some way in which they can leave, perhaps a new habit will be formed. This might only be discovered with some user testing.

The other issue is that it’s not easily discoverable. However, the tapping of the application bar (and double pressing the home button) are not easily discoverable actions, however, once learned, form an easy habit.

So yeah, I’ll keep it short, but come say hi over at the Liferay blog: http://liferay.com/web/ncavanaugh/blog

Made for fun, yet another Liferay piece.

Another Valentines Day piece for my lovely wife. Thankfully she prefers me to make her pieces of artwork for her gifts.

Liferay wallpaper done just for fun. It was eventually made into a tshirt.

This was my first Valentines Day gift to my wife, Jessica. I made her this, and then had it printed out at 20 x 30, and mounted on a foamcore and wood backing.

It came out really well, and she was very happy with it, but generally a lot of people dig it, so I’m pleased about that

First, let me just say: I originally posted that entry in direct response to a lot of antagonism coming towards religious people from the atheist crowd. Places like Digg, or really any online community populated by techy folks, are rather hostile to anyone who professes any sort of belief in anything supernatural.
The post wasn’t meant to indicate that anyone who is an atheist is stupid. More or less that I found the belief stupid.
I think I was a bit angrier back then, and I reacted negatively towards the general hostility towards my faith.

But looking back, my argument was pretty flawed, and a few of the commenters caught wind of it before I did. While the principle is *technically* true, it’s pretty tautological.
To say that there is no definitive proof against the supernatural doesn’t prove it either. Also, the side making the positive assertion always bears the burden of proof.
It doesn’t fall on atheists to prove that God doesn’t exist. However, I think the part I struggle with, and the part I reacted to in the other post is that so many atheists DO try to prove He doesn’t exist.

I can totally understand a call to clear, rational thinking free from superstition. In fact, I applaud it.
But what I was arguing was, and perhaps this is a bit more what I mean: dogmatic assertions of God’s non-existence is stupid.

I can understand arguments against poor logic, I can understand arguments against improper methods of reaching a conclusion, and against illogical extrapolations off of data.
But there are some people who seem to have a vested emotional interest in proving that God does not exist.

While not evidence in and of itself, it seems striking to me that atheists would cast as fools and morons the vast majority of the human population, spanning through time, across multiple and very different cultures and beliefs.

Some would argue that it’s a human flaw, and that the reason it’s flawed is because of the way that humans brains are wired, and how they perceive the world. That when a human being sees a coincidence, they will most likely assign that coincidence to the act of something supernatural.

But really, the only way to know for sure if that’s true is to have a definitive knowledge that the world is in fact purely materialistic. It’s just as likely that the same characteristic that most human beings have shared throughout time, and the one that atheists do not seem to share is the same as how most people can see the world in color, but there are a few exceptions that do not have that ability.

That I guess is where the faith side comes in. For a scientist to say that the only part of the measurable world is the part that is measurable is pointless to say. But when scientists, and philosophers step out of that and say that the only part of the entirety of existence is the measurable world, it takes a leap of faith since neither of us know for sure.

But then what about the side where atheists are just atheists because of lack of evidence, and not dogmatic atheists.
And there I think there can be honest, real dialogue and disagreement.

I happen to believe in the existence of God for quite a few reasons, but one of them is that everyone believes in the existence of something eternal and self-existent. Materialist’s just happen to believe that it’s the universe itself.
That to me goes against our logic. Everything in the universe has a first cause. Everything originally comes from somewhere.

It seems to me then that the first action must have a first cause, and that first cause would have to be outside of the nature of reality because that would be the only way to escape the principle of first causes.

I know this argument has been hashed out before, by folks much smarter than me. But I have yet to see a compelling argument against that one.

One thing, though, that I have learned since my original post: angry diatribes accomplish little to convince either side. The only way to truly discuss this is not with insults hurled, ad-hominem attacks, or immature statements designed to insult and degrade the other side. The only way that has any effect is to discuss it politely, lovingly and respectfully.

And I, of all people, should have known that.

My other piece for ArtPolitic’s Body Modification release.

I again wanted to explore something different than the norm with the body modification, and I got the idea from this from a fellow artist who sent me a picture of a church sign that read “Body piercing saved my life”. So, I wanted to represent that visually, and changed the phrasing up a bit.

This is one of those pieces that is “always turning the topic back …

Very personal to me and probably the one that without fail gets the most reaction. I wish it wasnt almost 8+ years old.

A bit of an older piece, but I still enjoyed making it, and I still like it. By the way, its a flower, not a jelly fish