Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Valentines Packaging
February 14, 2011

There is only one redeeming feature of those little chalk-like heart candies (of which we bought way, way too many for the purposes of photographing for our latest beer label): They have sort-of custom text on them.

What’s amusing about the hearts is that the packaging presents them as pristine. The text is clear and centered, and there are variations of text there that I’ve not seen in all of the photographing I’ve done of them. In reality, the chalky treats have text that is blurry, broken, printed outside the bounds of the candy, or printed too lightly or too heavily, and is in most cases unreadable. I wonder at what point quality control became a non-issue with these candies; when they stopped caring that you could actually read them. Or perhaps the printing was always crap.

Design Insufficiency
February 11, 2011

I read an article yesterday about how we need to get rid of window chrome - that stuff used to decorate application interfaces to make them look like real-world, tactile controls, even though they’re just displayed on a screen. For example, some applications - particularly the ones that edit video and audio - include a lot of knobs in their interfaces. The knobs simulate real knobs, but they replace a control, the spinbox, that would work equally well, probably better if you’re not used to the real world editing tools that use knobs. And now that it’s more likely you’re doing editing on a computer rather than some kind of studio rack, there’s really no excuse to continue simulating what you might never have seen and used in person.

Have you noticed the same thing I have with the evolution of cell phones that each new iteration is still missing things that consumers might demand? There are a couple of easy answers for why companies don’t make the ultimate phone. One is that they think it would be prohibitive in expense for people to buy it. Another is that they’re purposefully mixing all of the features up to keep consumers confused and sell new phones. I think paranoia has me believing this latter option.

An Ode to Oatmeal
February 09, 2011

I really hate it when blogs devolve into “what I ate for breakfast today”, even the ones with photos, so I know I’m treading into dangerous “Unsubscribe!” territory here, but I wanted to say a few words about something that is a large part of my life these days: Oatmeal.

When I was younger I was always a fan of instant Cream of Wheat. It was easy to make, and warm, and satisfying. But it was only a now-and-then thing. I was addicted to Frosted Flakes for a while there, and that’s all I would eat, barring the occasional bowl of cream of wheat.

Sledding
February 07, 2011

Beyond our back yard is the some of the common area in our development, including one of two twin hills after which our development is named. The hill is not very high, but it’s quite high enough to see the roofs of the nearby houses and off into the surrounding rolling hills characteristic of our region. When the snow is just right, it makes for an excellent sledding hill.

The above video was taken a few weeks ago when Riley and I went out with our new snow tubes to try them on the hill. We have yet to find something that consistently works well for sledding. Depending on the depth of the snow and the potential ice layer on top, different sleds are more useful. For example, in the snow that’s outside today, which is reasonably deep but covered in a sheen of ice, a hard plastic sled with a large footprint will usually do well. For days like the one shown, where the snow is an inch or two deep and is still dusty, the tube seems to work really well.

Which came first, the Cadillac or the Privilege?
February 04, 2011

Two days a week I pick up Riley after his half day of kindergarten. At the beginning of the year, they sent home (oh yeah, there’s another whole fiasco - remind me to tell you about school bureaucracy later) a sheet on the procedure for picking up kids after the morning kindergarten session. It was very specific.

You could tell from the letter that the school’s primary concern was safety. They didn’t want any kids getting run over. It was obvious from the way that the letter was worded that parents frequently found ways to get around the rules, and the school had to spell out specific things just to make sure those incidents weren’t repeated.