Posted by gr8dude on 2012 Dec 30, Sun in Technology / programming, Thoughts
Posted by gr8dude on 2012 Dec 06, Thu in Technology / programming, Thoughts, Usability
Programmers often talk about "stupid users" and there is a lot of humour revolving around this matter:
Every time someone declares their system fool-proof, nature retaliates by creating people who are more stupid.
People are the weakest link in any security system, airplane crashes are often the cause of pilot error, and nuclear disasters are often a consequence of the human factor. This is very well documented by Donald Norman in Turn signals are the facial expressions of automobiles.
It is often true, but not all the time; and when it is true - you're probably blaming the wrong person. The "credit" should be given to the creators of the system, for they are the ones who made the problem possible in the first place.
Posted by gr8dude on 2012 Nov 30, Fri in Thoughts
As a person with Tinnitus, I've been trying various things to deal with this condition. One of the upsetting aspects is that falling asleep is very difficult, because of the constant noise. At times it feels that falling asleep can take more than an hour, I keep twisting in my bed until my body is completely exhausted - then I have no choice but to do an "emergency shutdown".
This implies that even though I'm in bed for over 8 hours, I still feel tired in the morning; going to bed early doesn't seem to help me get more sleep.
I once made an interesting observation - when I go to sleep playing an audiobook (no headphones), next morning I resume playback and can't remember what the book is about. I rewind the story a little bit, until I reach a moment that sounds familiar.
Thus I have empirically established that when I fall asleep listening to an audiobook or a podcast - I doze off in 20 to 30 minutes.
Without audio - all I 'hear' is the tinnitus, and this is a completely different experience.
So here's a trick you could try:
- go to bed playing an audiobook
- next morning check how much of it you remember, then compute how long it took to fall asleep
- then compare this with the normal time to fall asleep
If this works for you, then you'll observe that this method lets you fall asleep faster. As a side effect, you get to dive into an interesting story (-:
I use MortPlayer for Android, as it has an "off timer" feature.
Good luck, and please share your experience with me.
Posted by gr8dude on 2012 Oct 26, Fri in Thoughts, Society, Photo / graphics
Reperele geografice joacă un rol important în viața unui american de rând. Aceasta se manifestă peste tot în infrastructură - la scară mică și mare, cât și în conștiința oamenilor.
Voi oferi exemple și ilustrații, ca să-ți fie clar cât de adânc e infiltrată chestia asta în societate.
Săptămâna trecută am fost invitat la un eveniment universitar - un fel de deschidere oficială a ”sezonului de vânătoare”. Vor fi câteva discursuri - decanul facultății, câțiva profi, studenți, etc. Mâncare și băuturi gratuite. În email se spunea că pentru a facilita interacțiunile dintre oameni - fiecare va primi câte un sticker cu inscripția ”ask me about ______” și va completa câmpul cu ceva interesant despre sine.
Am avut câteva idei în această privință, prima idee era ”ask me about anything”, pentru că asta descrie destul de bine spectrul intereselor mele. Apoi mi-am zis că totuși merg la o întâlnire organizată de un departament tehnic, așa că trebuie să scriu ”ask me about *”. Mai departe voi acționa în funcție de situație și îmi voi da seama cu cine vorbesc. Vor întreba despre expresii regulate? Despre servere Asterisk? Tabla înmulțirii? Sau despre orice altceva?
Apoi mi-am zis că niciodată nu știi de cine dai, poate voi contacta cu cineva care mă va întreba despre ”humanoid xenomorphs” și voi fi nevoit să le dezvălui toate secretele mele. De asta am ales să scriu ”ask me about * or about my T-shirt”, fie ce-o fi.
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Posted by gr8dude on 2012 Sep 25, Tue in Thoughts, Society, Photo / graphics
Ediția a doua, revăzută și completată. Ceva timp în urmă am expediat un email unui grup de prieteni dar se pare că mulți dintre voi nu l-ați primit. Din acest motiv am hotărât să-l public pe site, ca să evit lupta cu spamul. Aici am inclus mai multe descrieri și am atașat câteva fotografii.
This set of rules is designed to help me stay on my path without breaking my moral standards.
The reason I need this to be written down is because when I am under pressure exerted by someone else, I can get too focused on the matter at hand and fail to take into account the long term effects of my decisions. For example, when arguing with someone, an immediate objective is to end the unpleasant conversation - so I concentrate on that. The easy thing to do is to give them what they want and get out of there. Later I realize that the shortcut taken is in conflict with my ideals.
Keeping this list at hand all the time makes it easy to remember what my priorities are, so the chance of a blunder is much smaller.
We all want to live in a world that is fair. We must realize that:
- Fairness doesn't happen automagically, it is created by people.
- If other people don't do it, you have to.
- A good time to start is right now.
- Long term consequences are still consequences. They are difficult to predict, yet that doesn't mean they won't bite you in the ass later.
- When things go wrong and you blame it on the universe or society, you must also blame yourself; unless you can honestly say "I've tried all that was in my power to prevent it".
- The good feeling of sticking to my moral standards is much more powerful than the short-termed good feeling of ending an unpleasant conversation.
If you keep all of the above in mind, you'll realize that you actually have a lot of power in your hands. If you think it is too late to make a change, think again. There's a proverb I really like: no matter how far you've gone on a wrong path, turn around now.
p.s. this list is a work in progress, please help me expand it.
Posted by gr8dude on 2012 Jan 17, Tue in Thoughts, Recommendations, Book distillery
Taking notes when reading books is very helpful, if understanding and memorizing is what you want. The more times you process an idea in your head, the likelier it is that the idea will stick to you. I developed the habit of taking photos of fragments I found interesting, such that I could get back to them later and quickly sift through the notes, instead of having to go through the whole book again.
Prior to this, I used to takes notes on paper, but that raised several problems - I use different copy-books, I don't always have them with me; paper cannot be searched, thus the notes had to be digitized. That takes time and feels like doing the same work again. I then tried to write the digital notes as I was reading - that didn't work well, as it kept me tied to computers. I found a better solution that is less advanced, but is good enough for practical purposes - photos taken with a mobile phone.
The photos are published online - anyone can comment and exchange opinions. This brings us closer to a knowledge should be free world. As a result, my friends, colleagues can get involved, and so can perfect strangers! This turns reading books turns into a social activity.
Distilling books is the process of extracting key-ideas from a large text. The trick is in compressing a 500 page book into a set of 50 pictures that can be reviewed in half an hour. If you've read the book in the past - these snapshots will help you rebuild the big picture; if you haven't - they will help you decide whether you want to read the book or not. For an uber-lazy person, the distilled notes can serve as a replacement for the real thing (lossy compression is better than nothing).
The tools I rely on:
- Skitch for Android lets me take a photo, crop it and highlight the passages I'm interested in;
- Facebook for Android lets me publish photos directly from my mobile. I set the album properties to 100% public, so anyone can view them;
- Prior to becoming an Android owner, I took photos with a digital camera and edited them with GIMP or Paint.NET, depending on which computer was closer to me. This is very flexible, but it cannot be done "on the fly" (i.e. while I read), thus some photos were not posted because they got "lost in space". Doing everything on the mobile phone makes the process much smoother and "lazy-proof".
Here's a list of books that have been distilled so far:
- Punished by rewards by Alfie Kohn - a book about motivation and rewards in schools, at work or at home. As the title says, rewards are actually punishments, they can seriously undermine one's performance; this applies to children and adults. The book mentions a lot of experiments, there is plenty of evidence.
- The most human human by Brian Christian - you think you think? Think again! The author analyzes different aspects of the Turing test and delves into many related fields. The book has a lot of interesting examples, excerpts from Turing test conversations, references to historical events and old philosophers. There are plenty of jokes too.
- Intimate relationships and A general theory of love - two books focused on human relationships: mother-child, romantic relationships, friendship, sexuality. This is a scientific book, with charts and references to statistical data.
All new books will be added to the "book distillery" section of this site. I will be very happy to extend this list with your contributions, please keep in mind that:
- the photos must be public, you can post them anywhere, as long as anyone can view them without having to sign up;
- the photos must be of a decent quality, the text must be sharp and readable.
Enjoy reading!
Posted by gr8dude on 2011 Oct 03, Mon in Technology / programming, Thoughts, Usability
Although it feels like meat grinders have been around since the beginning of time, they are a relatively new toy. The first one was built in the 19th century, by Karl Drais; the same guy who created the velocipede - a proto-bicycle.
Every time I have to use one of these, I am facing the meat grinder's dilemma. In plain English:
Which way does the knife go in?
Aaaaah! You've been there too, haven't you?
Posted by gr8dude on 2011 Sep 24, Sat in Technology / programming, Thoughts, Society, Jokes
Many moons ago, if you happened to see a nice girl, it would take many weeks of "hanging out in the same area" at different times of the day, hoping that chance would intersect your paths again.
You would ruminate on that memory of her fading in and out of your view. You would keep guessing and imagining who she is, what she does and what kind of music she prefers.
And maybe... maybe, if you were a good guy (take the trash out, keep the house clean, do your homework and help your neighbors), the planets would align in your favour and you'd get the chance to have another glance at her fair face.
***
All you have to do today is sift your friends' photographs and look for that charming smile.
You will shortly find out her name and see that you have 19 friends in common. In 10 minutes you will know which other countries she visited, which movies she likes, where she studied, where and with whom she works.
If you get lucky (I did), she'll show up at the top of your news-feed, tagged in the photo of someone you know.
After a few more clicks, you might even see a pic of her handsome boyfriend and discover that she's friends with the people you were in a relationship with :-)
Welcome to the present! Mwahahaha!