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.