Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site
Commonsense design blog
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
Something very odd is happening to the LCD screens on the Notebook computers that play such a major role in our existence. The first aptly named “laptops” had small, low-contrast monochrome screens that had “eye strain” written all over them (well, not all of them did – the Grid Compass, in 1982, had a lovely … Read more
These days, every product and service come with scary warnings intended to cover the maker’s back side in case you harm yourself. Electrical appliances warn you not to drop them in water (Duh!), restaurant menus tell you you can die by eating their food (not here, thank God, but in the US they do), coffee … Read more
We already saw how overuse of pictorial instructions can be confusing. Well, I just ran into a wonderful victory of this trend. I passed a large office copier – the Konica 7222 – and here is what I saw on its document feeder: These guys spared no effort in their belt-and-suspenders approach: there is large … Read more
Here is an absolutely trivial product feature that turns out to be very nice. This is the latch release for the more recent IBM (now Lenovo) Thinkpad notebook computers. I’ve been through more models of Thinkpad than I remember, and until the T4x series they all had two latch releases on the front edge of … Read more
While touring the Spreewald in Germany we came upon the strange device in the center of this photo. In fact we saw many of them while punting in the canals of this “Germany’s Venice”. This is a leaky wooden box hanging on chains with a mechanism to raise and lower it relative to the water … Read more
Learning what makes things tick is a major pleasure for a techie… read my opinionated view on how one should teach the structure and function of objects, whether natural or technological, in the latest article on my Possibly Interesting web site.
A major cause of accidents and frustration is trying to use the wrong tool for the job. Professionals usually know, and have available, the right tool. Amateurs and beginners may be blissfully unaware of it. When I was just starting into homebrew electronics in my teens, I actually used to drill holes in metal with … Read more
A gem I saw in a museum recently: this is a large cuneiform-inscribed cylinder, maybe 3-4 inches thick, which describes the building activities of king Nebuchadnezzar (better known in the bible for his opposite exploit when he destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC). Anyway, in one of those moments of associative memory, it struck me how … Read more
I bought a screen protector for the LCD display on the back of my Nikon D40, and I just have to share the wonderful text on the back of the package, which reads: I’ve already expressed my incredulity at this sort of stuff; this one is just for your reading enjoyment. Incidentally, the product itself … Read more
I was visiting a hospital, and passed by a seminar room where my eye caught the items in the photo, sitting on a custom stand in the corner. Remember these? Used to be, they were so ubiquitous that they were instantly recognizable: an overhead foil projector and a circular magazine slide projector. These days, no … Read more