Fuckin' Ikea.

First let's talk about their layout.  It is designed to make you walk past everything they have.  They claim that there are shortcuts but they are not readily apparent or signed well.  This is fucking deliberate and evil.  If there is ever a fire, lots of people are going to die and it will be their fault.

When the zombie apocalypse happens Ikea stores will be a good tool for dealing with them.  Once they're inside they will never find their way out.

I only went there for a replacement transformer for a lamp I had because they made it unfixable.  Opening it was difficult enough. the plastic case was sealed with a solvent.  What really sucks is that half the components were under a black blob, so that even if I bothered to figure out which one was at fault, I wouldn't be able to replace it.

Of course I couldn't just buy a new transformer.  That would hurt lamp sales.  Being impatient I decided to just be a sucker and buy the lamp.  Of course they don't have a lamp section in the showroom, so I had to work out what type of room they expected that type of lamp to be used in before I could buy one.

I finally found it.  It works but probably won't last long.

What happened to the middle market, something between Ikea and Herman Miller?  Whenever I want something of good quality without a bunch of bullshit prestige branding I have to scour the thrift stores and garage sales for something from the '60's or earlier.

Some things I've learned from moving.

1) Get rid of your crap. - I've lived in the same place for 20+ years.  The amount of crap you can accumulate in that period is unbelievable.

2) Know where your stuff is. - I've managed to acquire multiple instances things no one will ever need more than one of; 3 offset screwdrivers, 4 sets of jeweler's files, 2 popcorn popers and I don't know how many nut drivers of various sizes.  I wound up in this situation by needing an item and not knowing where it was and simply buying a new one.

3)Live out of boxes. - Rounding up the boxes and putting my shit in them has been one of the more difficult parts of this move.

I don't know how this is going to turn out financially, selling my crap versus the expense of having it hauled may end up costing me money or leaving some extra in my pocket.  I guess I'll find out.

American Money.

I'm not going to talk about the shortcomings of fiat money, U.S. monetary policy or why Keynes was an assbag.  Plenty of others have done that far better than I could.

I am going to go on about the design flaws in physical U.S. currency.  This will all be old news to any foreigner who has traveled here, so you guys might as well just read an older post.

As any foreigner traveling in the U.S. can tell you, our money is confusing.  The notes are all the same color and size and the physical dimensions and apparent materials of the coins tell you nothing of their value.  The reasons for this all make sense historically but who wants to learn the history of a foreign countries money when traveling.  We just want to pay for our stuff and get on.

Let's take a look at the coins arranged by size.

This is not the correct denominational order.  So, lets show the color.  The world has a history of the values of metals being copper<silver< gold, so lots of countries use alloys resembling those metals to denote their coins.

 

But not the U.S.  The above is still not correct. 

Now let's look at them in the correct order.

We have .01, .05, .1, .25, .5 and 1.  They are labeled, stupidly, in prose, and sometimes in terms only an American or maybe, a Canadian would understand, for a couple of them. "one cent", "five cents", "fifty cents" and "one dollar" are as bad as it gets.  But, some time in the past some jackass at the bureaucracy of money designing decided to use colloquial terms on the coins.  No one should expect a foreigner to understand "one dime" and "quarter dollar".

Now to the notes.  In most of the world the notes are different colors and sizes.  Most tourist have stated that they prefer it this way.  I agree with them about the color, but I still prefer a uniform size, to make it easier to arrange things in my wallet.

You don't need multiple sizes to accommodate the blind.  You can just clip corners.

$100, Two diagonal corners clipped.
$50, two corners adjacent on the long side clipped.
$20 two corners adjacent on the short size clipped.
$10 three corners clipped.
$5 all corners clipped.
$1 stop making them and go to a coin like every dollar denominated country in the world.

This even leaves room for them to inflate and reissue $500 and $1,000 notes again.

What really sucks is that they have recently redesigned the currency and didn't fix any of these problem.  Whoever made those decisions deserves to get eaten by zombies.

PC Powersupplies.

Will someone explain to me why the ATX power supply doesn't have switched AC like the old AT ones.

Yes, I know that monitors and printers go into sleep mode when not receiving any data, but they're still drawing some power, which is a total waste when the computer is off.

Electricity is part of my rent so I'm not that motivated to find out how much power is being consumed by such devices in my life, but I do wonder is how much power is consumed by standby peripherals versus wall warts when not in use.

It's also important to remember that speaker amplifiers don't have any kind of sleep mode.

So, PC power supply makers, give us back the switched AC on the back of our power supplies.

As an aside, why doesn't anyone make a speaker amplifier that you can put in to the PC case and power it with the 12 volts and just run the audio lines to the speakers?

The Problem with Touchscreens.

Engineers and designers frequently get too excited about the new.  Touch screens seem to be the latest iteration of this.  Apple decided that since they were going to have one on their iphone that there was no reason to have a physical keyboard, and simply used software to put a keyboard on the screen.  Great for them.  Physical keyboards cost money.  Not having one leaves more money is Steve Jobs's pocket.

They work for anyone who doesn't have adult sized fingers or doesn't want to enter anything longer than a twitter message.  Just try to do a significant amount of text entry.

Secondly they chose to use the capacitive type that doesn't require a stylus.  I can sees some reason behind this.  Losing styluses sucks.  But how hard is it to place it back in the holder when you are done.  I've never lost one.  And who but a nine year old girl has fingers small enough to use those on screen keyboards?

But what sucks about the no stylus approach is that with screens as small as those on a phone, selecting an area that is only a few pixels is pretty much impossible.  Have you tried to move the cursor between two specific letters.  It takes several tries. 

To make matters worse,  Google, in all their designy brilliance decided to not include full bluetooth functionality, so you can't use an HID bluetooth keyboard with the Droid.  Fucking geniuses.

On the Dangers of Self Publishing

Enough Said.

"Swag" not "Schwag"

I just went to my last Comic Con, the reasons for which I won't be addressing here.  One reason I won't miss it is that I will hear fewer people referring to the swag as "schwag".  I had hoped that this was just the latest incarnation of 133t speak or whatever they call the insane contractions people use in SMS messages.

Sadly, it turns out that it isn't.  Far too many people think that it is the historic term.  They need a fucking dictionary.

Here is a brief and abridged history of the word leading to it's current usage.  It was originally referred to a bulgy bag, later to miscellaneous belongings and still later, in the late eighteenth century, to stolen goods and finally, it's current usage,  to promotional shit.  Check the OED if you doubt me.

The trendoids "schwag" only goes back to 1995.

Yes, there is fun to be had with humorous mispronunciations, but be aware when you are doing it.  Fucking hipsters

Some Gaps in the English Language.

There are several gaps in Prescriptive English and they bug me.

1) The lack of a plural "you".  In the hillbilly states of the U.S. they have "y'all".  Unfortunately that dialect has a lot of negative connotations, so people avoid the term.  Interestingly, I've noticed that younger educated people from that region tend to speak with a more standard version of American English, probably to avoid  those connotations.

Fuck it.  I come from a non-"y'all"ing part of the country and have made the deliberate choice to use it.

2) No marked distinction between an exclusive and inclusive "or".  Most programming languages have it.  This is especially difficult when spoken.  You never how your interlocutor interprets the colloquial "or" so you are forced to use ugly constructions to specify like "a or b but not both" and "a or b or both".  In writing it's easy you just put down "and/or".

I would love to see "xor", pronounced "ex-or" enter the language, spoken and written.  The advantages in spoken English are clear.  It also makes things easier in writing, no more clusmsily trying to reach that pesky "/" key, that only expert typist can seem to hit consistently.

3) a gender/number neutral pronoun, if only to avoid some feminist rants.  I have no problem defaulting to a gendered pronoun when the sex of the person can be reasonably inferred with reasonable accuracy.  Hypothetical construction workers are "he"s and hypothetical nurses are "she"s.  It's the hypothetical server that is the problem.

And then there is the problem that you don't always know how many people you are talking about.

Sadly, every solution to this situation is ugly and I can offer none better.

A Few Simple Features Bicycles Have Lacked since the Beginning.

I live and work in the semi-urban part of my town.  The buildings on the main streets are two or three stories high with store fronts on the ground floor and apartments or offices on the floors above with a few seven or eight story buildings scattered about and few parking lots.

Because of this, except for my main shopping day and an occasional trip to BFE I use my bike to get around.

I think people like me are an under served market segment.  I don't need a 36 speed, super shocked, hard core mountain bike or a ball crushing, a seat up the ass racing bike.  Since there lots of hills in the area, a simple one speed cruiser will not do either.  But, believe it or not, that isn't the subject of this entry.

As an apartment dweller in an area with lots of retail establishments, bike storage is a problem.

I can't keep it outside.  Like retailers, bums like to be where the foot traffic is.  It makes for better panhandling.  The problem is that when the panhandling doesn't pan out (yuk yuk), they steal, and they will steal anything, including parts of an unattended bicycle.  It would take a good ten minutes to secure all the parts of a bike well enough so that they couldn't be stolen.  And then there is the weather issue -- rain being bad for metal and all.

So that leaves keeping it in my apartment, which I do and it sucks.  With the handle bars, pedals and room to lean it, a bike takes up as much room as a small couch.

My ceilings are only eight feet high, so suspending it isn't an option.

I looked into folding bikes and they aren't for fat people.  At three bills, I'm way over their weight limits.  Even if I was in shape, they couldn't handle my weight and a couple bags of groceries.  So they're out.

The thing is, all the manufacturers need to to is enable us to quickly and easily significantly reduce one dimension of of the bike.  The easiest would be the width, that is just handle bars and pedals.  It would be fairly simple to make the pedals flip up and back and latch in their positions.  A similar mechanism could be made for handle bars.  This is not difficult engineering.  People have been making collapsible things for thousands of years.

One last thing I want is a parking brake.  As it stands now I can't lean it against the wall without the front wheel rolling and the bike falling.  My low tech solution is a length of bungee cord tied around the handle that I use to hold the brake down when the bike is in my apartment.

I don't think I'm asking too much of the manufacturers.

Finally, it must be remembered that once the walking dead have overrun the earth, the infrastructure for cars will be gone, yet it will be a few years before the roads are impassable by bikes.

Unfortunately our concerns won't be limited to zombies.  Other survivors can't be counted on to be as civilized as they once were, so we will need to take our bikes into our hidey holes at night.  Given the expected weight loss in this situation, a folding bike would be fine.

Fountain Pens, Seriously?

For a number  of years now, I've seen people pull fountain pens out of their pockets whenever a signature is called for.  I've always assumed they were pretentious posers and probably, even worse, lawyers.

I recently discovered the Pilot Varsity, a disposable fountain pen, and decided to try it out to see what the big deal was.  I was not impressed.  It felt like a gel pen when writing and it shared the major shortcoming of gel pens.  If the paper is curling and the tip makes any contact, ink flows.  Worse, I was playing with the cat, whipping the pen back and forth for him to bat at it and and it flung ink out.  I can just see these on the playground.  Kids would be having ink fights.

It turns out that the Bic Crystal, a 60 year old design, is still the most practical pen around.  The hexagonal body prevents it from rolling too far.  The transparent body lets you know when you should think about a replacement.  It won't leak in your pocket, even if you loose the cap.  It's cheap.  It's sturdy, you can put it in your back pocket and sit on it with out breaking it.  I even found one under the carpet of my car several years after I bought it and after some coaxing it still wrote.  Finally the ink is thick enough and the point sturdy enough that it requires some serious pressure to write with it.

I understand that artists and calligraphers might have uses for fountain pens, but not the rest of us.

When the zombies come, all the diaries will be written with Bic Crystals or pencils.

So, yes, fountain pens are for pretentious posers.

Bring Back Normal Monitors.

I had to buy a new monitor semi-recently.  This was a disappointing experience.  I could not find a normal (4 x 3) monitor.  In every store I looked in there were only wide screen (16 X 9) monitors available.

What the fuck!?  Are computers becoming toys now?  I'm sure that some jerkwad is saying to himself "but a lot of video comes in wide screen and I like the big panorama when I'm playing Killoshooto" or whatever.  Get yourself a TV and game console. 

Wide screens suck for doing anything with text.  Have you tried reading a several two foot lines of text?  You have to keep bobbing your head back and forth, not to mention the difficulty of simply visually tracking a line that long, especially when the asshole designer decided that some sans-serif font looked pretty.

For working with text, a vertical aspect ratio would  be best, something like 2^1/2 X 1, the same as the European A series standard for paper.  Unfortunately the this isn't realizable on laptops due to the need to accommodate keyboards, and it would be more maddening to have two separate standards, one for desktops and another for laptops.  So let's just go back to 4 X 3, it's a reasonable compromise.

I don't see that happening.  If the display manufacturers can shove one format down everyones throats they will.  It's cheaper than having multiple formats.  Bastards.

Of course another solution is available.  UI designers could offer another window sizing button - a "vertical maximize" which would give you window of (screenHeight/2^1/2) X screenHeight.  The designers of text based applications and web pages could optimize for such a display ratio, reading on-line is easier for everyone and peace, love and harmony will reign throughout the universe.

Yeah, I don't see that one happening either.

Toilet paper holders

Have you ever thought of toilet paper holders.  Few have,  But one person did and came up with a brilliant design.

Public bathrooms have some considerations regarding the dispensing of toilet paper beyond those for the home.  These are that people will steal anything, even a half used roll of toilet paper and they will overuse what they don't pay for.

The manufacturers of toilet paper holders for public bathrooms have come up with some ugly solutions to these problems.  One method to prevent theft is to place a locked cover over the roll with just the end sticking out.  Another is to use strange sized rolls, usually under the same locked cover.

To prevent over use they will usually have some kind of mechanism to stop the roll from turning after so much rotation, or they will have a lot of friction making it impossible to pull out a decent amount without tearing it into shreds.

As I said, these are all ugly solutions, especially for small businesses that aren't going to get a contract with a janitorial supply company and are just going to buy their toilet paper at the local store.

Fortunately someone has come up with a holder that balances the needs of preventing over use, theft and the need to use standard rolls.

You'll note in the picture that the axle for the spindle is off center.  This prevents the roll from gaining momentum as someone pulls paper off thus preventing over use.

But, the real brilliance here is the spring loaded axle.  The only way to remove the spindle is to pull the axle inside which can't be done with a roll installed.  You have to wait until the roll is empty, then tear off the core to pull the axle inside, thus preventing theft.

As you can see, it uses standard rolls.

This shows that a lot of simple, mature technology has room for improvement.

There aren't many zombie issues here since they don't poop and those of us left alive will scared shitless anyway.

My Irrational Love of Mechanical Watches

I love mechanical watches.  I've never really been able to explain it, but I'm going to try here, but I'll probably just come up with a bunch of rationalizations.  Here ' goes.

• They require no consumables.  You don't need to take them to some drug store to have the battery replaced.  This will come in handy when you need to know how long you have until dark so you can get back to your base camp in safety when being hunted by flesh eating hoards of the undead.
• They tick.  As one gets older, there is some comfort in hearing your watch through your pillow.
• ...Uhm
• Er...

Ok, that didn't work.  Two realish reasons are all I could come up with.  I will have to accept the fact that it is just an aesthetic preference.

I can't claim that there is any kind of simple elegance.  They're very complicated mechanisms.  Now days they are using synthetic sapphires and rubies in them.  While those are cheap to make, there is something decidedly inelegant about creating a high tech infrastructure for a low tech product.

While accurate enough for any normal life stuff, they don't come close to quartz watches for accuracy.

They're not cheap.  If you want to impress the Joneses, you can spend tens of thousands of dollars on one.   But you can also spend that amount on a quartz model and get the same social climbing cred.  A decent mid-range mechanical will cost about $500.00.  A good quartz can be had for $150.00.

So, I guess I have to confess a preference for stupid design here.

But Damn, there is just something insanely cool about getting the kind of accuracy and reliability that they do from springs, levers and gears.