Nathan's Possibly Interesting web site
Commonsense design blog
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of everyday product design
New on my Possibly Interesting site: Heroes and Barbarians, Propaganda postcards from the Great War. Showcasing a collection of postcards issued to Italian soldiers in the first world war, in order to urge them to fight in that tragically senseless conflict. An illuminating, if disturbing, lesson in how to craft hate propaganda.
So here is a wonderfully useful tool from Shachihata: the Artline 710 Long Nib Marker. What’s the big deal, you ask? Not if you’re a handyman, you don’t! This funky looking tool is designed to fill a very specific need: marking through deep holes, as when you have to drill holes in the wall to … Read more
Was in Germany and saw these in a supermarket. The thing is called Bischofsmütze – which means Bishop’s hat, although there’s something vaguely oriental (Islamic oriental, I mean) about it. This is the weirdest fruit I remember ever running into – it looks like it’s a mashup of two different species, with the poor attention … Read more
Here we have two glove compartments. The one on the left is from the Renault Clio; the other from a Mazda 3. They serve the same simple function and – not surprisingly – look pretty much the same, if you ignore the nice touch in the Mazda’s, that places the latch closer to the driver. … Read more
You may have heard of the Aquatic Ape theory, which deduces from our hairless skin that our ancestors had gone through an ocean-dwelling phase. Well — here is my new theory: that the common cat, Felis catus, evolved from a flying creature! Consider the cat’s ear. Whenever I scratch a cat behind the ears I … Read more
Here is an item I saw on the wonderful Nostalgia Online site. They have a large collection of vintage kitchen utensils, most of which I do recall from my childhood, and many of which I run into as I rummage in flea markets in search of computing history items. However, this one I’ve never seen … Read more
Many, many years ago when I was a teenage geek, I was green with envy at the Coil Winding Calculator that an older friend had access to in his university lab. It was an extremely useful device – a cardboard slide chart that allowed you to compute the parameters for winding a coil of a … Read more
See the hilarious street sign. Why is it hilarious? Well, if you can read Hebrew you don’t have to ask. For the rest of you, here is the story. Palermo, where this sign hangs, was home to a large and lively Jewish community in the middle ages. Then, in 1492, the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand and … Read more
Here is a street sign from Tel Aviv’s Ramat Hachayal area, a vibrant hi-tech hub. The sign hangs on a building at Hanechoshet st., as stated in English. The Hebrew is more detailed: it has the street name at the top, followed by the fine print, which explains the name. Nechoshet in Hebrew means copper, … Read more
Beauty can sometimes appear in the most unusual places. I snapped this photo on a sidewalk near my home: As I was watching, a passerby kicked the bottle, and it started spinning, giving me a good idea of what we’re seeing: someone had discarded and squashed the bottle, and someone else set it spinning and … Read more