September 2008 Archives

OK, this is admittedly a small issue. But I have an oven with digital controls. When you turn it on, you first have to set the temperature before it starts to warm up. What I end up doing is setting the temp. to 350° immediately to start it warming, then I go back and change it to the temp. I want.

What I don't understand is why the oven doesn't start warming up right away. Why not have it already defaulted to 350° when you turn it on, and let you change it from there? It's little things like this that separate a mediocre product design from a great one.

I was working on a shopping cart UI recently, and I was shocked by the dearth of hi-res credit card logos out there. Not only that, but there are a lot of previous brand logos kicking around out there. You think with all the e-commerce going on, the credit card companies would want to go out of their way to provide high-quality, up-to-date images of their brands. Not so. I could find nothing of the sort on any of the credit card web sites. So I created my own.

I started with the largest logos I could find (Tin Eye was a great image search tool for this), then used Photoshop to remove the compression artifacts and correct the colors. The Amex logo was impossible to fix, so I ended up recreating it in vector form in Illustrator, then applied the blue gradient in Photoshop.

Here is a ZIP archive containing all four high-res credit card logos. Enjoy. If you like them, link back to this page from your blog, Delicious, Digg, or wherever.

Update: After a tip in the comments, I compiled this set of vector credit card logos. I had to re-created the AmEx one myself, so it's not exactly right. But good enough until these companies get their act together and provide these assets on their own sites.

Enough people have pinged me about my previous Flickr photo post, that I thought I should follow up on my current solution. There's a great GreaseMonkey script that adds links to the Flickr photo page giving you single-click access to the original photo (and other sizes as well).

You need Firefox.
Then get GreaseMonkey.
And finally install the Flickr Photo Page Enhancer.

Now when you visit a Flickr photo page, there are additional links in the right column for viewing different sizes of the photo, as well as getting HTML for embedding the photo into another web page.

My US Airways statement looked exactly the same as it had for the last 15 or so years: just over 10,000 frequent flyer miles and no recent activity. I stopped flying US Air when I moved from the East coast out to California. Northwest, United, Alaska... pretty much every other airline had better flight options for me.

So I'm about ready to put it through the shredder when I notice the offer to convert those miles into magazine subscriptions. Perfect! I can zero out my account and get some reading material at the same time. They had a reasonable selection, and I wasted no time in signing up for The Economist, The Atlantic, and BusinessWeek. I still had a bunch of miles left, so I got Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Inc. And to finish things off, Conde Nast Traveler and (I'm sorry to admit) Details.

Not long after, the magazines started to show up. And then more came. And then they came pouring in. Three of the magazines are weekly, and the others are monthly. So after about 3 months, I had stockpiled a small library's worth of reading material. I got through some of them on various trips out of town. But I have to face facts: I'm a wired guy. I end up spending most of my free time on the computer.

There is now a 20 magazine limit in the house. I'm pretty much tossing the Details, Forbes and Travelers as they come in. I skim BusinessWeek and try to read The Economist and The Atlantic for the most part. Entrepreneur and Inc are now taken into work and not read there.

It was a good idea, but I took it too far. I should have gotten only a couple of subscriptions, and left the remaining miles to renew next year. But on the upside, I don't have a US Air balance to worry about anymore.

Most holidays we celebrate are meaningless and they are just another day off. Labor Day, Presidents Day, even (sad to say) Memorial Day and Independence Day. It's just a day off of work to have a BBQ or go to the beach. I propose a national holiday that is actually meaningful.

It's interesting to listen to people who are either themselves faced with death, or to the loved ones of those whom are dying or have died. Few are enlightened enough to appreciate (or improve) the relationships in situ; But in the finality, it becomes the most important thing — and even the only thing — that matters. Either people appreciate the great relationship they had, or they regret not having a closer one.

Combining the two ideas, we should have a Pretend your loved one is dead holiday. The idea is to confront your relationships as if it were at the end. Like all forms of introspection, it would prompt you to rethink your approach to all of your relationships, where and how to invest your energy. It would help strengthen your good relationships, and mitigate or possibly even eliminate the "bad" ones.

Of course it needs a better name; Pretend your loved one is dead is a bit morbid. Thoughts?

September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. If you're reading this on September 19th, well then that's today! Show a leg you lubber -- hoist the colors!

It's clips like these that make me think The Daily Show is the most important political commentary in America today. Who else is doing this sort of expose work and presenting it in a way that the is compelling and entertaining so that reaches so many people? They are a true paragon of the First Amendment. 

I stumbled across this site in my wanderings across the InterWebs yesterday, and it looks pretty amazing. It's has great data visualizations of the most recent political polls on the presidential election. Unfortunately, it looks like Obama was ahead, until McCain's announcement of Palin on his ticket, which pushed him into the lead.

Check it out. And do what you can to help Obama win the critical swing states: Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, New Hampshire, Virginia, Ohio, and Michigan.

For my Masters project in 1995, I worked on a project called Sportscope. The goal was to work on the vision for something that was technologically about 5 years out.

The basic concept was a device that could be rented at the ballpark and used to get additional data on the players, see highlights, and even order food to be brought to your seat. The core ID revolved around what we called a "hyper-environment". At the time we envisioned electronic tags (like a longer-range RFID) on items in the environment that could be "clicked" on which would them provide more information. While our implementation was in the ballpark, we envisioned other uses, such as providing tourists with information on sites, or as real estate shoppers driving around and looking at properties for sale.

Fast forward to this week. TonchiDot appears to be doing the same thing. But it's not clear they actually have viable technology, as all of the hard questions asked by panelists at the conference were answered with flip sound bites. With all the technologies available today (GPS, cell tower triangulation, bluetooth, WiFi, smartphones...) it seems inevitable that this will happen soon.

There's a movement afoot to eat more locally grown food (for example, EatLocal.net). At my work, we always get a big catered lunch on Mondays, and there are nearly always a bunch of leftovers in the fridge. I was joking yesterday that the leftovers were about as local as you can get. Only 20 steps from where you sit.

Perhaps you had to be there...

I finally got fed up with the lowercase g and ampersand in Trebuchet. So I bought a font editor (TypeTool), and fixed these characters. The g now looks a lot like the one in Meta, and the ampersand... well it's not great, but it's OK and was easy to create by modifying the existing one.

In order to avoid any licensing issues, I've retraced all the letters into my own version of the font that I call Catapult. I'm using these versions on my computer now. I've not done the italic faces yet, though. It took me long enough to figure out how to use the tool. As soon as I get around to doing the italics versions, I'll post them all in a package for download.

Time is our most valuable commodity simply because it is finite resource. But while you can't technically buy more time, you can optimize the things you do in your day to make more discretionary time available to you.

The number one thing to do is shorten your commute. I suppose this is one of those things ingrained in me from childhood. We lived literally 300 yards from where he worked. He walked to work every day. Now I haven't achieved that level of optimization, but for 11 years I've lived less than 10 miles from work. I currently live 3 miles away: a 6 minute drive or 12 minute bike ride. I've also been biking to work regularly since 2001: another optimization I've previously written about.

Now I understand the appeal of living in SF or the East Bay (or even Marin or Auburn). But I assert the total costs outweigh the benefits. Spending 2 hours in the car 5 days a week is not worth the coolness of living in the city, or the cost savings of living on the rural fringe. Really that cost savings is negligible when you now factor in the high price of commuting today.

I probably could have saved $300k buying a comparable house in Alameda county. But my commute would have been 1.5 hours/day longer. At 180 commute-days/year over the course of a 30-year career, that works out to $37/hour.

So the question is, would you pay $37 for an extra hour in your day?

I needed this function recently, and might need it again in the future. I'm posting it here so it will be easily findable when I do need it again. FWIW, the Prototype Javascript Library handles this really well with its $ function, but the page I'm putting together doesn't need that kind of overhead.

function elementById(x) {
  if (document.getElementById) return document.getElementById(x);
    else if (document.all) return document.all[x];
    else if (document.layers) return document.layers[x];
    else return null;
}

Although it is not illegal to share lanes with motorcycles, it is unsafe.

California Driver Handbook

Cars and motorcycles each need a full lane to operate safely. Lane sharing is not safe. Riding between rows of stopped or moving cars in the same lane can leave you vulnerable. A car could turn suddenly or change lanes, a door could open, or a hand could come out of a window. Discourage lane sharing by others.

California Motorcycle Handbook

I got my motorcycle permit before I learned to drive a car. I recently gave it up, simply because it's too dangerous. I suppose if there's any part of your body you wouldn't mind losing, then you can get away with not protecting it. But I want to keep all of mine, which is why suiting up for a ride takes over 10 minutes.

That's why it baffles me that on top of the already dangerous activity of simply driving a motorcycle on the road, many riders feel the need to crank up the risk factor and speed along between lanes of traffic mere inches from impact. I don't care if it is legal. So is smoking. So is eating meat. So is riding without a helmet in one of the 30 states that don't require it. Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it is safe.

Nor does it mean you necessarily have the right to do it. Drivers are under no obligation to make room for motorcycles splitting lanes. In fact as the California Motorcycle Handbook states, drivers should "discourage lane sharing by others." I do just that, and I encourage other drivers to do the same.

I was out on a houseboat with a group of friends over the long Labor Day weekend. You'd think the control panels on a rental houseboat would be designed so someone unfamiliar with them could figure them out without training or a manual. And you'd be wrong. Just to get power to operate the electrical system, you needed to go to the back of the boat where the generator control panel is, turn on the blower for a minute, turn it off, hold down the on switch while pressing the start button, wait for it to warm up for a minute, then switch a dial over to "boat power".

But the real UI travesty was the engine blower. The blower is there to air out the engine compartment of any built up gas fumes, which could otherwise ignite in a massive conflagration. The problem is, the blower runs continuously when the switch is on, pulling power from not the boat's generator, but from the starter battery. There's no indication that the blower is on other than the position of the switch: no light, no warning beep, and not even a mechanical hum. So it's far too easy to accidentally leave the blower on and drain the starter battery. Which we did. 9 miles from the marina.

Luckily the rental company had the policy of sending a mechanic out to deal with any boat problems. The guy was fast, and for good reason; he's had a ton of practice. We were the 3rd boat that day that needed a jump start. All because of that poorly-designed blower switch.

Problem solver that I am, I decided the best way to solve this problem would be to install timer switches on the blower circuit. You've probably seen these on hot tubs or saunas, where they want to limit the amount of time the heater is on for safety reasons. It wouldn't cost more than a few hundred dollars to outfit the whole fleet with these, and they would save a ton of hassle for their mechanics, not to mention the gas to drive a boat out the stranded renters. 

David Creemer wrote this post that got Reddited, spiking us into the thousands of page views for this blog. Yesterday, Seth Godin picked up on my eBay marketing post and wrote about it on his blog. Take a look at the chart of our traffic. It makes the rest of our traffic look like a rounding error.